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During the past 20 years, solid state physics has become one of the major branches of physics. 1-2 Today over one-third of all scientific articles published in physics deal with solid state 3 topics. During the last two decades, there has also been ra~id growth of scientific computation in a wide variety of fields. -5 The combination of solid state physics and comp~tation may be termed computational solid state physics. This emerging field is distin­ guished from theoretical solid state physics only to the extent that electronic computers rather than slide rules or backs of envelopes are used to solve numerical or logical problems, test scientific hypotheses, and discover the essential physical content of formal mathematical theories. Papers in computational solid state physics are widely scatter­ ed in the literature. They can be found in the traditional physics journals and review series, such as The Physical Review and Solid State Physics; in more specialized publications, such as Journal of Computational Physics, Computer Physics Communications, and Methods in Computational Physics; and in the proceedings of a number of re­ 6 9 cent conferences and seminar courses. - Plans for holding an International Symposium on Computational Solid State Physics in early October 1971 were formulated by Dr.

During the past few years, there has been dramatic progress in theoretical and computational studies of large molecules and local­ ized states in solids. Various semi-empirical and first-principles methods well known in quantum chemistry have been applied with considerable success to ever larger and more complex molecules, including some of biological importance, as well as to selected solid state problems involving localized electronic states. In­ creasingly, solid state physicists are adopting a molecular point of view in attempting to understand the nature of electronic states associated with (a) isolated structural and chemical defects in solids; (b) surfaces and interfaces; and (c) bulk disordered solids, most notably amorphous semiconductors. Moreover, many concepts and methods already widely used in solid state physics are being adapted to molecular problems. These adaptations include pseudopotentials, statistical exchange approxi­ mations, muffin-tin model potentials, and multiple scattering and cellular methods. In addition, many new approaches are being de­ vised to deal with progressively more complex molecular and local­ ized electronic state problems.