Abstract
NEARLY TWO CENTURIES ago, the English chemist Humphrey Davy wrote "Nothing tends so much to the advancement of knowledge as the application of a new instrument. The native intellectual powers of men in different times are not so much the causes of the different success of their labors, as the peculiar nature of the means and artificial resources in their possession." Davy's observation that advantage accrues to those who have the most powerful scientific tools is no less true today. In 2013, Martin Karplus, Michael Levitt, and Arieh Warshel received the Nobel Prize in chemistry for their work in computational modeling. The Nobel committee said, "Computer models mirroring real life have become crucial for most advances made in chemistry today," 17 and "Computers unveil chemical processes, such as a catalyst's purification of exhaust fumes or the photosynthesis in green leaves."
