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.”
Whether describing the advantages of high-energy
particle accelerators (such as the Large Hadron Collider