1898: Radium is discovered by the husband-and-wife team of Pierre and Marie Curie.

Sorbonne-bred physicist Pierre Curie had been noodling with crystals and magnetism since the early 1880s. He was a professor at the School of Physics in Paris when one of his students, Marie Sklodowska, caught his eye. They wed in 1895, and theirs was both a happy marriage and a fruitful professional collaboration.

A colleague of the Curies, Henri Becquerel, paved the way for their groundbreaking research with his discovery of spontaneous radioactivity in 1896. With the rest of the scientific community going gaga...

MC Srivas brings Google's 'secret sauce' to everyone else. Photo: MapR

M.C. Srivas is amazed by Google’s search engine. And he helped build Google’s search engine.

He’s amazed that if you search for “2005 Accord,” Google seems to understand you’re looking for a family sedan, giving you links not only for used Honda Accords but for similar cars with similar prices — a Volkswagon Passat or a Toyota Camry. He’s amazed Google can sort out the difference between a search for an apartment and one for a house. He’s amazed it can distinguish between “new” and “New York” and “New York Times.”

But he’s n...