The Origin and Evolution of the Elements: Data-Driven Nuclear Forensics

I will review the processes of making the elements in various astrophysical environments, emphasizing the role of fundamental physics and observational evidence. I then discuss how to understand chemical evolution from both the ab initio and the data-driven approaches, contrasting the respective central issues. To illustrate the latter approach, I show how the average patterns of heavy element production via rapid neutron capture, the r-process, can be inferred from the data on old stars in the Milky Way and how they can inform us about the conditions of the underlying astrophysical sources and the nuclear systematics governing the r-process.