Richard Mushotzky

Since the dawn of x-ray astronomy 60 years ago, finding and studying active galaxies (accreting supermassive black holes) has been a prime area of study. I will briefly summarize the events of the last 5 decades focusing on my own research. Over the last decade a major change in our understanding of these objects have been enabled by the first sensitive hard (E> 10 keV) all sky x-ray surveys, followed up by detailed observations across the entire electromagnetic spectrum. I will also summarize some major changes in our understanding of the nature of the host galaxies, the relationship to star formation, black hole mass, AGN fueling, and the implications for the theoretically predicted effect of feedback at low redshifts. I will examine the next steps in our understanding, stressing the soon to be launched XRISM x-ray spectroscopy mission and discuss the more distant future, focusing on the AXIS x-ray probe concept.