Spherical Harmonics

These harmonics are classified as spherical due to being the solution to the angular portion of Laplace's equation in the spherical coordinate system. Laplace's work involved the study of gravitational potentials and Kelvin used them in a collaboration with Peter Tait to write a textbook. In the 20th century, Erwin Schrödinger and Wolfgang Pauli both released papers in 1926 with details on how to solve the "simple" hydrogen atom system. Now, another ninety years later, the exact solutions to the hydrogen atom are still used to analyze multi-electron atoms and even entire molecules. Much of modern physical chemistry is based around framework that was established by these quantum mechanical treatments of nature.