Introduction to the Hypatia Colloquium 2021 book of proceedings

In times when most of the planned international conferences, science events and seminars have been postponed or cancelled because of the COVID-19 pandemic, ESO decided to organize a new series of talks aimed at fostering the visibility and promoting the work of astronomers at an early stage of their career: the Hypatia Colloquium. This book collects the scientific contributions of most of the speakers of the first series in the form of proceedings.