Chemical evolution of the Milky Way and its Satellites

Abstract

This paper contains the lectures I delivered during the 37th Saas-Fee Advanced Course in March 2007. It reviews all the main ingredients necessary to build galactic chemical evolution models with particular attention to the Milky Way and the dwarf spheroidals of the Local Group. Both analytical and numerical models are discussed. Model results are compared to observations in order to infer constraints on stellar nucleosynthesis and on the formation and evolution of galaxies.Particular attention is devoted to interpret abundance ratios in galaxies with different star formation histories. Finally, the cosmic chemical evolution is discussed