Giant Resonances in Atomic Nuclei

Giant resonances (GR)-their experimental search and study of their properties and nature-is one of the central problems of nuclear physics. In the present paper, the development and extension of views on GR are traced. It is also discussed what has "happened" to GR after more than three decades since the first attempts to understand the nature of one of them-giant dipole resonance-in the framework of the mean-field theory.