Giant resonances in nuclei

A review is given of the present situation of electric giant resonances in nuclei. Starting with the properties of the well-known electric dipole resonances the authors summarise the known experimental facts on resonances with other angular momenta and parities. They mainly discuss the giant quadrupole and giant monopole resonances which are known best. The difficulties connected with the extraction of nuclear structure information from the experimental cross sections are discussed in detail. They also review the theoretical developments in this field and emphasise especially microscopic models and the corresponding results. As far as possible the experimental facts are compared with the theoretical results.