The early stages of galaxy formation shortly after the Big Bang are increasingly accessible to direct observation with today's large telescopes. Measurements of the chemistry and kinematics in star-forming galaxies at 0.2< z <3 indicate that they are more luminous, less abundant in heavy elements, and less massive than the population of galaxies we observe today. In particular, fundamental galaxy correlations such as those between luminosity, line-width, and metallicity evolve with cosmic epoch. These findings are consistent with the idea that a period of vigorous star formation and merger activity during the first few billion years of the universe rapidly produced the foundations on which most of today's large galaxies are built. The data also indicate that lower mass galaxies begin to form at successively more recent cosmic epochs.