Luminous infrared galaxies were discovered in small numbers about three decades ago. Their discovery as a large class of objects was made by the IRAS satellite in 1983.  They emit the bulk of their radiation in the infrared, and may represent evolutionary stages of two merging elliptical galaxies to a quasar.   The dominant powering mechanism of luminous infrared galaxies has been shown to be either starburst activity or Active Galactic Nuclei (AGN) activity, and sometimes both.     our TTF image of IC5063 Click here for more pretty pictures!       We carried out an optical and radio study of 285 infrared galaxies over a range of luminosities to answer the following questions:   What is the relative contribution of starburst and AGN activity to their overall energy budget? Do luminous infrared galaxies form an evolution sequence?   See my thesis for more details!