Abstract

A quest for magnetic monopoles is one of the oldest in science. Magnetic monopoles reappear in so many theories that "one would be surprised if Nature had made no use of it" (Dirac, 1931). It is a "must do" search each time a new accelerator starts operating and it is especially true for the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) which provided a much higher energy reach than previous colliders. In spite of the striking signature in the detectors the search is quite challenging. The first LHC search for magnetic monopoles with the ATLAS detector will be presented and opportunities for future searches will be discussed.