SO colloquium: A Light in the Dark - Massive Star Birth Through Cosmic Time

Massive stars are important throughout the universe, but their formation remains poorly understood. I review current understanding of how massive stars form in our Galaxy, in particular examining observational tests of various predictions of Core Accretion and Competitive Accretion theories. Finally, I discuss how massive star formation may have been different in the very early universe and how the first stars may have become supermassive objects to seed the supermassive black holes powering active galactic nuclei.