Grappling with Complexity

We are in the midst of a computational revolution that will change science and society as dramatically as the agricultural and industrial revolutions did. The discipline of computational science is significantly affecting the way we do hard and soft science. The articles in this special issue of PHYSICS TODAY demonstrate the vital growth of the infant computational physics. Supercomputers with ultrafast, interactive visualization peripherals have come of age and provide a mode of working that is coequal with laboratory experiments and observations and with theory and analysis. We can now grapple with nonlinear and complexly intercoupled phenomena in a relatively short time and provide insight for quantitative understanding and better prediction. In the hands of enthusiastic and mature investigators, intractable problems will recede on a quickened time scale in this computationally synergized environment.1