[en] Following a broad summary of the author's view of nuclear structure in 1974, he will discuss the key elements they have learned in the past 25 years from the research at the M.I.T. Bates Linear Accelerator center and its sister electron accelerator laboratories. Electron scattering has provided the essential measurements for most of the progress. The future is bright for nuclear structure research as their ability to realistically calculate nuclear structure observables has dramatically advanced and they are increasingly able to incorporate an understanding of quantum chromodynamics into their picture of the nucleus