Abstract :
Modern nuclear structure theory is rapidly evolving towards regions of exotic shortlived nuclei far from stability, nuclear astrophysics applications, and bridging the gap between low-energy QCD and the phenomenology of finite nuclei. The principal objective is to build a consistent microscopic theoretical framework that will provide a unified description of bulk properties, nuclear excitations and reactions. Stringent constraints on the microscopic approach to nuclear dynamics, effective nuclear interactions, and nuclear energy density functionals, are obtained from studies of the structure and stability of exotic nuclei with extreme isospin values, as well as extended asymmetric nucleonic matter. Recent theoretical advances in the description of structure phenomena in exotic nuclei far from stability are reviewed.