Astrophysics Colloquium - The Emergence of Massive Black Holes in our Universe

The emergence of massive black holes has been an open question in astrophysics for going on 50 years now. Central massive black holes have been detected as the powerhouses of galactic nuclei for at least the last 20 years already challenging seeding and formation channels. New observations with JWST have brought this challenge into sharper focus by uncovering a large population of lower luminosity AGN previously hidden from our view. In this talk I will attempt to cover the history of the field, the mainstream pathways to massive black hole formation and what the new observations are telling us about the early massive black hole population.