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Since the discovery of topological insulators and semimetals, there has been much research into predicting and experimentally discovering distinct classes of these materials, in which the topology of electronic states leads to robust surface states and electromagnetic responses. This apparent success, however, masks a fundamental shortcoming: topological insulators represent only a few hundred of the 200,000 stoichiometric compounds in material databases. However, it is unclear whether this low number is indicative of the esoteric nature of topological insulators or of a fundamental problem with the current approaches to finding them. Here we propose a complete electronic band theory, which builds on the conventional band theory of electrons, highlighting the link between the topology and local chemical bonding. This theory of topological quantum chemistry provides a description of the universal (across …