Nuclear Structure Far from Stability

Heavy-ion fusion reactions near the Coulomb barrier can, in principle, be used to synthesize isotopes all along the proton dripline and up to the heaviest elements. However, the production cross-sections are small, frequently sub-microbarn, and it has taken many years to develop experimental techniques which allow detailed gamma-ray spectroscopy at these low levels. Using Gammasphere, triggered by the Argonne Fragment Mass Analyzer (FMA) or by Microball we have made considerable progress in several areas. I will review results from the N = Z line, from spectroscopy tagged by proton emitters, and from the very heaviest nuclei. These measurements on nuclei far from stability provide a precursor to future studies with radioactive beams, for example from RIA the Rare Isotope Accelerator.