[en] Quantum chromodynamics is today accepted as the fundamental theory of strong interactions, even though most hadronic collisions lead to final states for which quantitative QCD predictions are still lacking. It therefore seems worthwhile to take stock of where we stand today and to what extent the presently available data on hard processes in hadronic collisions can be accounted for in terms of QCD. This is one reason for this work. The second reason - and in fact its original trigger - is the search for the quark-gluon plasma in high energy nuclear collisions. The hard processes to be considered here are the production of prompt photons, Drell-Yan dileptons, open charm, quarkonium states, and hard jets. For each of these, we discuss the present theoretical understanding, compare the resulting predictions to available data, and then show what behaviour it leads to at RHIC and LHC energies. All of these processes have the structure mentioned above: they contain a hard partonic interaction, calculable perturbatively, but also the non-perturbative parton distribution within a hadron. These parton distributions, however, can be studied theoretically in terms of counting rule arguments, and they can be checked independently by measurements of the parton structure functions in deep inelastic lepton-hadron scattering. The present volume is the work of Hard Probe Collaboration, a group of theorists who are interested in the problem and were willing to dedicate a considerable amount of their time and work on it. The necessary preparation, planning and coordination of the project were carried out in two workshops of two weeks' duration each, in February 1994 at CERn in Geneva andin July 1994 at LBL in Berkeley