The spin structure of the nucleon

This document describes the recent experimental results on the spin structure of the nucleon obtained with the electron accelerator Thomas Jefferson National Facility (Jefferson Lab), Virginia. We first discuss the goal of studying the nucleon spin structure and give the basis and phenomenology of high energy lepton scattering. Then, we discuss with some details a few sum rules concerning the spin structure of the nucleon. Those are important tools for studying the nucleon spin structure at Jefferson Lab. We then describe the present experimental situation and analyze the results. We have been able to determine an effective coupling constant for the strong interaction for any regime of quantum chromodynamics which proves that QCD is an approximately conformal theory. We conclude on the perspectives for this field of research, in particular with the 12 GeV energy upgrade of Jefferson Lab. The top priority will be the measurement of generalised parton distributions. The only issue that will stay misunderstood is the role of the very low x domain on the spin structure of the nucleon