Chemical evolution of the Galaxy.

The author gives a brief historical overview. He surveys, and if necessary makes corrections to the observational material, namely, the G-dwarf metallicity distribution, the age-metallicity relation, gas and metallicity distributions in the Galaxy, the luminosity functions of stars and white dwarfs in the solar neighborhood, the distribution of pulsars, etc. He derives the history of star formation in the solar neighborhood from the study of chemical evolution, and applies these results to a derivation of the initial mass function of stars, the birthrates of white dwarfs and pulsars, the evolution of iron in the solar neighborhood and the metallicity gradient in the Galaxy. He concludes by highlighting the difficulties of the simple model and suggesting studies that may improve our understanding.