A few hundred million years after the Big Bang, the hydrogen in deep space was ionized into its component protons and electrons. Theorists speculate that this landmark event was caused by the birth of the first galaxies. Can powerful telescopes, probing back in cosmic history, directly witness this event? Large telescopes have already traced the evolutionary history of galaxies back to when the Universe was 1 billion years old. The first results from a new infrared camera onboard the Hubble Space Telescope give us our first glimpse of primitive stellar systems at even earlier times. Professor Ellis will address the progress and challenges of this fundamental quest for our origins, and discuss the future prospects with the next generation of giant 30-40 meter aperture ground-based telescopes.