What’s interesting is if the environment is not spherically symmetric (consider an electron in a molecule) the solutions to the wave equation (the electronic wave functions) are no longer spherical harmonics, even though we like to approximate them with combinations of spherical harmonic basis functions centered on each nucleus. It’s kind of like standing waves on a circular drum head (hydrogen atom) vs standing waves on an irregular shaped drum head
Of course the nucleus also has a wave nature and in reality this interacts with the electrons, but in chemistry and materials we mostly ignore this and approximate the nucleus like a static point charge from the elctrons perspective because the electrons are so much lighter and faster