Neutron stars are fascinating astrophysical objects, arising at the end of some stars' lives. In one sense, they are just stellar corpses, leftovers of stellar explosions, wandering the universe.

But, in another, they are extremely interesting physical systems: among the densest in the universe, with massive magnetic fields and extremely large surface gravities.

Studying these stellar oddities requires a knowledge that goes from general relativity all the way to nuclear and particle physics.

In this lecture, we will cover their discovery by British astronomers some 40 years ago, other Nobel-prize-winning ideas associated with them and recent discoveries that have challenged our understanding of these outstanding interstellar beacons.