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After a brief review of the history of viscosity from classical to quantal fluids, a discussion of how the shear viscosity η of a finite hot nucleus is calculated directly from the width and energy of the giant dipole resonance (GDR) of the nucleus is given in this paper. The ratio η/ s with s being the entropy volume density, is extracted from the experimental systematic of GDR in copper, tin and lead isotopes at finite temperature T. These empirical results are compared with the results predicted by several independent models, as well as with almost model-independent estimations. Based on these results, it is concluded that the ratio η/ s in medium and heavy nuclei decreases with increasing T to reach $(1.3 - 4) \times \hbar /(4\pi k_{\mathrm {B}})$ at T = 5 MeV, which is almost the same as that obtained for quark-gluon plasma at T > 170 MeV. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]