Impact of CLAS meson photoproduction experiments on N* spectroscopy

When the first nucleon resonance, Δ, was observed in pion-nucleon scattering in 1952, the nucleon resonance era begun Almost seven decades later the latest edition of the Review of the Particle Physics lists 50 non-strange baryons. Nonetheless, models consistently predict still more states yet to be observed - the so-called "missing resonance problem". Until the mid 90s, of the twentieth century most of the data on the nucleon resonances came from pion-nucleon scattering. However over the last two decades the focus has shifted to exclusive meson photoproduction experiments as the main source of new information about nucleon excitations. The CEBAF Large Acceptance Spectrometer, CLAS, emerged as the major contributors to this field. An overview of CLAS photoproduction experiments will be presented and their impact on N* spectroscopy will be discussed.