The Cosmogony of Super-Massive Black Holes

We summarize our recent results on the evolution of super-massive black holes in the cores of galaxies. Our models are based on the viscous, Eddington-limited evolution of self-gravitating accretion disks. We find that, within this framework, one can explain the growth time scales and the luminosities of individual objects as well as the variation of these quantities for AGN with different black hole masses.