“Ab initio” models of galaxy formation: successes and open problems

In the past decades, different approaches have been developed in order to link the physical properties of galaxies to the dark matter haloes in which they reside. In this review, I give a brief overview of methods, aims, and limits of these techniques, with particular emphasis on semi-analytic models of galaxy formation. For these models, I also provide a brief summary of recent successes and open problems.