Abstract :
This brief review explores the future perspectives of nuclear physics at the dawn of the next millennium, a century after the great discoveries of H. Becquerel, Marie and Pierre Curie. Nuclear physics plays an important role in the understanding of the formation of matter in the universe. Today, fundamental research is moving towards new frontiers. Challenging physics issues like the quest for the quark-gluon plasma, the structure and the dynamics of hadrons, the properties of nuclei under extreme conditions of spin, mass, temperature and/or far off stability are the main research avenues for the future.
The methods and the tools developed both experimentally and theoretically to probe and understand the nucleus at the microscopic level have a broad spectrum of applications both in other fields of sciences and in our society. Specific examples related to nuclear medicine and nuclear energy will illustrate the possible impact of the applications of Nuclear Physics to our everyday life.
