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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 14 August 2015
The theory of stellar interiors is generally considered as well settled, and many branches of astrophysics rely on its results. However, the true situation is not so bright. Despite great successes at its beginning, in the sixties, it has to deal with many physical processes, generally poorly understood, which have large influences on the results and the derived quantities, like for instance ages.
After a rapid description of these difficulties, I will recall the majorquestions of the confrontation between theory and observations, and how HIPPARCOS can and will help. As an illustration, a few preliminary results will be presented, and future prospects foreseen. But, this short review is byno means exhaustive; there are many more results dealing directly or indirectly with stellar structure theory which have already been presented at theVenice Symposium (Perryman et al, 1997a), and many more, I am not aware of, will certainly appear soon.