The aim of the lecture is to briefly describe the mathematical background of scattering theory for two- and three-particle quantum systems. We discuss basic objects of the theory: wave and scattering operators and the corresponding scattering matrix and illustrate them on the example of the Schrödinger equation. Our goal is to present time-dependent and stationary approaches and to describe the underlying mathematical methods. We also give a sketch of scattering theory for three interacting quantum particles including a difficult problem of the asymptotic completeness of scattering channels. Along with traditional results, we discuss new scattering channels arising for long-range pair interactions.