India, Nov. 20 -- A hundred years ago, a young physics teacher in Calcutta quietly rewrote the way nature counts. On November 20, the idea he discovered-now known as Bose-Einstein statistics-turns 101. It is not the kind of anniversary that usually makes headlines. There are no rockets launching or satellites blinking in the sky. Yet this century-old insight by Satyendra Nath Bose lies beneath some of the world's most advanced technologies shaping the twenty-first century.

The story began with a simple question Bose asked his students: what happens when we try to count tiny particles of light? In our everyday world, counting is straightforward. Ten apples mean ten individual pieces of fruit. But at the microscopic level, the rules bend. ...