In the early 1900s, the concept of theoretical chemistry emerged. Essentially, instead of performing experiments, we can use mathematics and physics to figure out how molecules behave under different conditions. Within theoretical chemistry, there are a couple of different subfields, including quantum chemistry. What quantum chemistry comes down to is using the fundamental physics of quantum mechanics to understand how molecules behave under different circumstances. If you go down to the scale of atoms or molecules, you have electrons and atomic nuclei. Instead of electrons behaving like classical particles, the electrons follow quantum mechanics. Also, some parts of atomic nuclei, such as protons, are also very small and need to be treated quantum mechanically. When quantum mechanics became rather mature in the 1920s, many scientists realized that they could actually use the laws of quantum mechanics to understand how electrons and atomic nuclei behave. Even though it started a long time ago, electronic computers made it possible to actually use quantum mechanics, to apply it to study molecules. That started out in the 1950s, and with all the advances in computers in the past 70 years, we've seen more and more interesting developments and advances in the field of quantum chemistry.
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