Chemical Evolution of Galaxies

Chemical evolution of galaxies refers to the evolution of abundances of chemical species in galaxies, which is due to nuclear processes occurring in stars and to gas flows into and out of galaxies.§The book deals with the chemical evolution of galaxies of all morphological types (ellipticals, spirals and irregulars) and stresses the importance of the star formation histories in determining the properties of stellar populations in different galaxies. The topic is approached in didactical and logical manner via galaxy evolution models which are compared with observational results obtained in the last two decades. The theoretical models allowed understanding of some basic aspects of the formation and evolution of the chemical species in the universe. They include aspects of stellar evolution and nucleosynthesis which are the best studied and better assessed. Other aspects such as the star formation process are still very poorly known but many efforts have been made to parameterise these processes in order to have an idea of how influential is the history of star formation in galaxies. In spite of the poor knowledge of the physical processes determining star formation, it has been understood that the star formation history is the main driver in the evolution of galaxies.§The aim of this book is to provide an introduction to students as well as to fix our present ideas and summarise all the efforts made by several authors in the past years in order to help future research in the field.