  The advent of electronic computers has revolutionised the application of
statistical mechanics to the liquid state. Computers have permitted, for
example, the calculation of the phase diagram of water and ice and the folding
of proteins. The behaviour of alkanes adsorbed in zeolites, the formation of
liquid crystal phases and the process of nucleation. Computer simulations
provide, on one hand, new insights into the physical processes in action, and
on the other, quantitative results of greater and greater precision. Insights
into physical processes facilitate the reductionist agenda of physics, whilst
large scale simulations bring out emergent features that are inherent (although
far from obvious) in complex systems consisting of many bodies. It is safe to
say that computer simulations are now an indispensable tool for both the
theorist and the experimentalist, and in the future their usefulness will only
increase.
  This chapter presents a selective review of some of the incredible advances
in condensed matter physics that could only have been achieved with the use of
computers.
