For much of the history of chemistry, the proof of any chemical reaction was in the doing. The bench top was the proving ground. The blackboard or the back of the envelope might serve as the site for working out a reaction but actually making the compound was the true test. This is still true today but in the past fifty years, the availability of computers and computation software, along with a deeper understanding of the theoretical underpinnings of chemistry, have made the job of the synthetic chemistry much easier. Testing out products, reagents, and reactions using minutes or hours of computer time instead of days or months at the bench has greatly increased productivity and design in research.

Computers have enabled the facile storage and retrieval of structures and other chemical information. The interesting mathematical problems posed by the new quantum mechanics required massive amounts...