February 14 is a lot of things — St. Valentine’s Day, for one, the day Bell applied for a patent for the telephone (1876) for another — but the important event for a scientist is the discovery of the element LAWRENCIUM, #103, at the University of California, Berkeley.

It’s named after E. O. Lawrence, inventor of the cyclotron. Read more about its controversial history (thus the ? in the title of this blog) here.

No wonder the elements are the obvious choice for a mystery series.