The Past, Present and Future of the VLA: Celebrating 40 Years

In 1980, The Very Large Array (VLA) went into operation. In the four decades since, the VLA has been the most versatile, the most powerful, and the most widely-used radio telescope in the world. The VLA has been instrumental in many breakthrough discoveries: the detection of water ice on Mercury, the first detection of a microquasar in the Milky Way, the discovery of supermassive black holes in dwarf galaxies and Einstein Ring gravitational lenses, and the first detections of radio emission from a Gamma Ray Bursts, among many other discoveries. The National Radio Astronomy Observatory is organizing a science meeting to commemorate 40 years of operations of the Very Large Array, with VLA past, current, and future science highlights while looking forward toward the era of the next generation VLA project.