We begin in Section 2 with an overview of the pulsar phenomenon, the key observed population properties, the origin and evolution of pulsars and the main search strategies. In Section 3, we review present understanding in pulsar demography, discussing selection effects and their correction techniques. This leads to empirical estimates of the total number of normal and millisecond pulsars (see Section 3.3) and relativistic binaries (see Section 3.4) in the Galaxy and has implications for the detection of gravitational radiation from coalescing neutron star binaries which these systems are the progenitors of. Our review of pulsar timing in Section 4 covers the basic techniques (see Section 4.2), timing stability (see Section 4.3), binary pulsars (see Section 4.4), and using pulsars as sensitive detectors of long-period gravitational waves (see Section 4.5). We conclude with a brief outlook to the future in Section 5. Up-to-date tables of parameters of binary and millisecond pulsars are included in Appendix A.
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