ABSTRACT
By 1927 atomic physics had fallen into an abyss of ambiguities. And this occurred for reasons that had little to do with considerations of empirical data. Rather, by mid-1925 the core problem in atomic physics was the failure of physicists to extend into the atomic domain intuitive concepts and their visualizations of phenomena that had been assumed essential to understanding nature. The author discusses how this realization came slowly and with great reluctance. More than anyone else, during those years he interacted with Werner Heisenberg who had, as Weisskopf put it so well, 'learned to think' in Copenhagen. On 8 June 1926 Heisenberg wrote to Pauli: 'The more I reflect on the physical portion of Schrodinger's theory the more disgusting I find it. What Schrodinger writes on the visualizability of his theory. I consider trash. The great accomplishment of Schrodinger's theory is the calculation of matrix elements'.
