Abstract. Distant clusters provide ideal samples of galaxies in more-or-less standard environments in which to study the evolution of the galaxies themselves, bound structures, the larger-scale environment, and perhaps eventually to provide data for the classical cosmological tests. We review some of the the observational and theoretical aspects of these topics.

INTRODUCTION

Clusters of galaxies at large redshifts provide, in principle, a set of objects whose evolution can be traced directly from epochs as early as z ≈ 1 with present observational capabilities to the present. It seems almost inconceivable that large clusters are destroyed, and although it is quite clear that clusters are still forming, the inner regions of dense clusters must be quite old. Thus if one looks at galaxies in such regions and takes care to sample clusters whose comoving space densities are roughly the same at all epochs, it would seem as if one could define a quite homogeneous sample of galaxies in which the direct forbears of a set of present-day objects could be studied. We are not quite in a position to do that because the cluster catalogs are in such a sad state, but some progress is being made in this direction; we will discuss this at greater length below.

If one could choose clusters at epochs from the present back to large redshifts in some objective way, it would also be possible to study the evolution of the cluster population itself.