Institute for Theoretical Atomic, Molecular and Optical Physics between AMO theory and experiment and promoting AMO theory within the general physics community. It has been involved in some capacity in most of the National Research Council target areas, i.e. precision measurements and tests of fundamental laws, ultracold physics, the development and application of ultra-intense, short wavelength light sources, ultra-fast quantum control of atoms, molecules and electrons, nanoscience, and quantum information science. The Institute is sponsored by the National Science Foundation, the Smithsonian Institution, the Center for Astrophysics and Harvard University. The Armstrong Report in 1987 on "The State of Theoretical Atomic, Molecular and Optical Sciences in the United
Atomic, molecular, and optical physics by photons or collisions with atomic particles. While modelling atoms in isolation may not seem realistic, if one considers molecules in a gas or plasma then the time-scales for molecule-molecule interactions are huge in comparison to the atomic and molecular processes that we are concerned with. This means that the individual molecules can be treated as if each were in isolation for the vast majority of the time. By this consideration atomic and molecular physics provides the underlying theory in plasma physics and atmospheric physics even though both deal with huge numbers of molecules. Electrons form notional shells around the