Eight gigayears of galaxy mergers Galaxy interactions are expected to play a crucial role in the build up of stellar mass in any cold dark matter cosmology. Of particular interest are the mergers between systems of a comparable mass as they are predicted to be one of the main modes of galaxy growth and have a crucial impact in the shaping of galaxy morphologies and dynamics. In this thesis I study two key aspects of the role that mergers play in galaxy evolution: a) What is the contribution of major galaxy interactions to the star formation history of the Universe at z < 1 and b) How important are galaxy interactions for the build up of the massive end of the red sequence To answer the first question I use photometric redshifts stellar masses and UV star formation rates from COMBO 17 24 microns star formation rates from Spitzer and galaxy morphologies from two deep Hubble Space Telescope cosmological survey fields to study the enhancement in star formation activity as a function of galaxy separation ...