The quest for Dark Matter

Abstract This paper briefly presents the dark matter problem and the many ongoing attempts to solve it. After a brief introduction to the history of dark matter, the paper reviews the relevance of this mysterious component of the Universe in modern cosmology and it discusses the implications of the absence of evidence for dark matter in all experiments carried out in the past four decades. It then argues that a new era has started in the search for dark matter with much astronomical data about to become available and a new generation of gravitational wave experiments about to start operations. Finally, it stresses that the field of dark matter searches is completely open and that there are exciting opportunities for the next generation of scientists to develop new ideas and to make ground-breaking discoveries.