1 Iso and the Cosmic Infrared Background

ISO observed, for the first time to such a high sensitivity level, the midand farinfrared universe. A Number of deep surveys were performed to probe the cosmological evolution of galaxies. In this review, I discuss and summarize results of mid-infrared ISOCAM and far-infrared ISOPHOT surveys, and show how our vision of the extragalactic infrared universe has become more accurate. In particular, ISO allowed us to resolve into sources a significant fraction of the Cosmic Infrared Background (CIB) in the mid-infrared, and to probe a fainter population in the far-infrared with the detection of the CIB fluctuations. Together with other wavelength data sets, the nature of ISO galaxies is now in the process of being understood. I also show that the high quality of the ISO data put strong constraints on the scenarios of galaxy evolution. This induced a burst in the development of models, yielding to a more coherent picture of galaxy evolution. I finally emphasize the potential of the ISO data archive in the field of observational cosmology, and describe the next steps, in particular the forthcoming cosmological surveys to be carried out by SIRTF.