The Nobel Prize in Chemistry was awarded in 2000 to Alan Heeger, Alan
MacDiarmid, and Hideki Shirakawa for the discovery and development of conductive
polymers. This event brings attention to and gives an opportunity
to review the two decades of intensive research in this field. The
talk will concentrate on two topics. One is the optics of linear
polymers, such as polyacethylene, the story of solitons, intragap states,
and their experimental manifestations. The second will be devoted
to the modern stage of optical and electro-optical studies in conducting
polymers. The effects of long-range Coulomb interaction on the absorption
by the bound and free electron-hole states and the recent experiments on
phenyl-based polymers will be discussed.