Giant resonances in atomic nuclei

Giant resonances (GR)-their experimental search and study of their properti es and nature-is one of the central problems of nuclear physics. In the pre sent 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 sinc e the first attempts to understand the nature of one of them-giant dipole r esonance-in the framework of the mean-field theory.