Sixty years ago the picture of the production of the elements in stars was established with the eight nucleosynthetic processes that still represent the basis of this research field. I will describe the birth of stellar nucleosynthesis, the production of the chemical elements in stars, and the observational constraints coming from stellar spectroscopy and from the laboratory analysis of stardust grains extracted from meteorites, as well as the differences between the two. Finally, I will show how recent progress in the laboratory analysis of extra-terrestrial samples has allowed the discovery of tiny but unmistakable signatures of stellar nucleosynthetic origin even in bulk materials in the Solar System, from the Earth to different types of meteorites. These signatures must have been carried by the original stardust grains and their sorting can potentially give us new information on the evolution of the protoplanetary disk.