Abstract: As one type of single nucleon transfer reactions, deuteron stripping reaction has been playing an important role in the study of the single particle structure of atomic nuclei. Also, as a typical three-body nuclear reaction, deuteron stripping reaction is also an important subject in the development of direct nuclear reaction theories. We briefly review the history of the study of deuteron stripping reactions, focusing on the evolution of its theoretical descriptions, and the differences and the relations of the Plane Wave Born Approximation(PWBA), the distorted wave Born approximation(DWBA), the Continuum Discretized Coupled Channel method(CDCC), the Adiabatic Wave Approximation(ADWA), and the approach based on the Faddeev equations. Some important problems being currently addressed in deuteron stripping reaction theories and those should be addressed in near future are also discussed, including deuteron strippings at intermediate and high energies, theory for transfer to continuum states of the residue nuclei, applications of dispersive optical model potentials and non-local potentials, etc. Some preliminary results of our theoretical calculations for deuteron stripping at intermediate and high energies are presented.