Agn Host Galaxies: HST at Z ~ 0.1 and Gemini Adaptive Optics at Z ~ 2

A study of 76 host galaxies of Active Galactic Nuclei (AGN) in the local universe (z ~ 0. 1) carried out with Hubble Space Telescope shows that these hosts are remarkably similar to typical field galaxies. They have normal distributions of disk and bulge size and surface brightness and do not show an obvious preponderance of peculiar structures or morphologies which might suggest recent strong interactions. The outstanding characteristic is that early-type galaxies constitute 55% of the AGN host sample compared to 10-20% of the field population suggesting a spheroid-black hole linkage. This AGN sample was selected on the basis of X-ray flux from the Einstein Medium Sensitivity Survey and is expected to show no bias with respect to the host galaxy properties.