  The high redshift observations of galaxies now becoming available from the
Hubble Space Telescope and from large ground based telescopes are opening fresh
windows on galaxy formation. Semianalytic models of galaxy formation provide us
with a powerful tool to interpret and understand these exciting new data. In
this review, we explain the philosophy behind this class of model and outline
some of their remarkable successes, focussing our attention on the formation of
elliptical galaxies and on the properties of galaxies at high redshift. Now
that the recent discovery of star forming galaxies at z=3 has made possible the
construction of the cosmic star formation history, which is in good agreement
with our model predictions, it appears that a coherent, broadbrush picture of
galaxy formation is beginning to emerge.
