Nuclear structure at the limits of resolution: Looking through individual wave functions

60 years ago Niels Bohr suggested the idea of the compound nucleus. Bohr`s picture strongly resembles that of quantum chaos. Here one comes to the limits of resolution studying particular stationary states at high level density. Present knowledge comes from the experiment and from theoretical constructions, confirmed by the experiment at lower energies and extrapolated into the region where fine resolution measurements are not feasible. Such an analysis was carried out recently for heavy atoms and shell model nuclei. Among complicated states with the same values of integrals of motion, either (i) adjacent states have different structure or (ii) they {open_quotes}look the same{close_quotes} on the microscopic scale. Only (ii) corresponds to strong mixing assumed in the compound nucleus theory. Many-body chaos in nuclei is caused by residual interactions rather than by specific shape of the {open_quotes}container{close_quotes} as in quantum billiards. The shell model, including all degrees of freedom (in truncated space) along with the symmetry requirements, guarantees the correct level density up to some excitation energy. Therefore one can extrapolate the calculations into terra incognita of high lying states.