Gravitational lensing: Recent progress and future goals

After the enthusiasm raised by the discovery of multiple quasars and a few years later of giant luminous arcs in clusters of galaxies, gravitational lensing has proven to be a versatile tool to study a broad range of astrophysical problems. I will illustrate recent results obtained in several domains such as: the mass determination for galaxies and clusters of galaxies, the mapping of large scale structures, and the use of lenses to constrain the Hubble constant.