Si nous ne faisions pas les choses dans la passion, nous ne ferions rien (Le Cardinal d'Espagne, Henri Millon de Montherlant).

Manuel Forestini spent 10 years at the Grenoble University. Most of hisresearch activities during this decade appear in the following chapters of this book. Mycontribution focuses on Manuel's teaching activities and his activeimplication as a member of Grenoble University.

We describe in a brief form present results we have obtained from a careful and up to date study of the evolution of massive stars including their advanced evolutionary phases beyond the oxygen burning phase. We describe the effects of mass loss, treatment of convection in inhomogeneous stellar layers and the rate of the 12C(α, γ)16O reaction on the properties of stellar models in the interesting case of a 25 M๏ star of solar-like initial metallicity.

Binary stars are abundant. We describe their orbits and the effects oftides and introduce the concept of the Roche lobe and mass transfer.We illustrate binary star evolution with Algols, cataclysmic variablesand type Ia supernovae as examples.


Some important features of current stellar yieldsof CNO elements are discussed, with particular emphasison recent results concerning rotating and mass losing stars.These yields may help to interpret relevantobservations in the local Galaxy, the Milky Way disk and extragalactic systems,like extragalactic HII regions and Damped Lyman Alpha systems (DLAs).


In this contribution, I will focus on two nuclides, 26Al and19F whose origin has been uncertain for a long time and stillremains a matter of debate. I will present the contribution of ManuelForestini to the understanding of the origin of these nuclides, and inparticular to the description of their synthesis in asymptotic giant branchstars. I will also present an overview of the latest resultsconcerning 26Al and 19F and of the open questions stillto be answered.

The inclusion of rotation in massive star models improves the agreement between theory and observations in many respects that are briefly recalled here. Rotational mixing, by changing the chemical profiles in the stellar interiors, has important impacts on nucleosynthesis.We shall first discuss the case of solar metallicity models and then explore consequencesboth in the high and very low metallicity ranges. The effects in very metal–poor stars arespectacular and give new insights on the evolution of the early star generations in the Universe.

The evolution of stars in the mass range 7–12 M๏ is characterized bythe off-center ignition of carbon in condition of partially degeneracyfollowed by the propagation of a convectively bound flame and the formationof a neon-oxygen core. In this chapter, we review the evolutionaryfeatures of these peculiar stars and pay a special attention to thethermally pulsing super-AGB phase and associated nucleosynthesis. Theevolution toward electron capture supernovae for the most massive membersof this class is briefly mentioned. In light of new computations, we alsodiscuss the question of Mup, the critical mass above which carbon ignitesas well as Mn, the minimum mass for the formation of a neutron star andanalyze the dependence of these transition masses on metallicity.

Low-mass stars (<2–2.5 M๏) exhibit, at all the stages of theirevolution, signatures of processes that require challenging modelingbeyond the standard stellar theory.In this paper we focus on their peculiarities while they climb thered giant branch (RGB).We first review canonical evolution along the RGB and compare theclassicle predictions of the so-called first dredge-upwith observational data in various environments.We show how clear spectroscopic diagnostics probe the nucleosynthesisand the internal mixing mechanisms that drive RGB stars.Coherent data reveal in particular the existence of a nonstandardand shallow mixing process that changes the surface abundances at the so-called RGB bump.We discuss the current understanding of the connection betweenthis extra-mixing and stellar rotation and conclude on the remaining open questions.

The common way to build stellar models is to treat the radiation zones as inert, stable regions, in contrast with the well mixed convection zones. This allows to account for the main features of stellar evolution, such as the main sequence and the existence of red giants. But there are many indications that some mixing occurs within the radiation zones, and that it has an impact on the later stages. 
Manuel Forestini was one the first to undertake the implementation of such mixing in his stellar code, and thus to go beyond the standard model. Here I will briefly describe the mixing processes that are likely to operate in stellar radiation zones, as we understand them today, and discuss how well they account for the observed properties of stars.


An approach to describe dust forming circumstellar shells aroundpulsating Asymptotic Giant Branch stars is presented with the aim ofunderstanding the mass-loss mechanism of these objects. The resultingmodel structures are discussed and the model predictions are comparedwith suitable observations. Finally, some implications of the mass-lossprocess on the evolution of the mass-losing star are discussed.

We present a summary of the extensive problems posed by the curious abundance correlations seen in stars in Galactic globular clusters.We discuss three scenarios, and conclude that only one seems to beconsistent with the observations. Even this is still rather unsatisfyingfrom many viewpoints. We determine the kind of nucleosynthesis requiredand discuss AGB stars as the possible source. Some calculations seem torule out AGB stars and others seem to favour them. The reasons for the differences are discussed. No satisfying conclusion is reached!


The recent discovery of microscopic grains of presolar origin in primitive meteorites has opened a new field of astrophysics where scientists from different disciplines, from nuclear physics to astronomy, chemistry and mineralogy, are required to work together. In this inter-disciplinary field information on the composition of stars is obtained through laboratory analysis of meteoritic rocks. We review the main features of the composition of presolar SiC and oxide grains that are believed to have originated in Asymptotic Giant Branch (AGB) stars. High-precision laboratory measurements of the isotopic composition of these types of presolar grains represent the most detailed record of the composition of AGB stars, and thus a major constraint for the theoretical models of these stars. In particular, the CNO and Al/Mg compositions can set constraints on extra-mixing processes in red giant and AGB stars. The composition of heavy elements produced by slow neutron captures (s-process) yields a variety of information on the grain parent stars, including their masses and the way neutron sources operate.