Particle astrophysics emerged in the 1980s as a new field at the junction of high‐energy astrophysics, cosmology and particle physics. This new experimental, observational and theoretical discipline concerns itself, for example, with the nature of dark matter; the detection of neutrinos from the Sun and from supernovae; the evidence for powerful acceleration mechanisms in the vicinity of neutron stars; and the suggestion that quantum fluctuation and topological singularities in the first moments of the cosmos played a role in the formation of the great structures we see today stretching over hundreds of millions of light‐years.