After the discovery of discrete rotational bands corresponding to superdeformed nuclei with spin around 60h, the study of the structure of these nuclei over the last five years has witnessed a significant expansion in physical understanding with the emergence of new phenomena and in a technical development with the construction of sophisticated apparatus to examine these nuclei. On the eve of the approaching operation of news detectors such as EUROGAM resulting from a French-British collaboration,or the American GAMMASPHERE, this article discusses the present state of knowledge on superdeformation and exposes the theoretical basis as well as recent experimental results in the field
