Curium was synthesised in 1944 at the Metallurgical Laboratory of the University of Chicago, as part of the Manhattan Project, by Glenn Seaborg, Ralph James and Albert Ghiorso, who bombarded plutonium-239 with alpha particles from a cyclotron at Berkeley. It was named in honour of Marie and Pierre Curie, the pioneers of radioactivity, in the same way that gadolinium had been named after the chemist Johan Gadolin. The announcement was made in 1945. Curium is a hard, silvery, intensely radioactive metal. Because it generates considerable heat as it decays, one of its isotopes has been used as a power source for space probes. Curium compounds were also used in the alpha particle X-ray spectrometers that analysed the rocks on Mars aboard NASA's rovers.
Before and after
- 24 December 1943Birth of Tarja Halonen
- 1944Golden Globes
- 1944Bella ciao
- 1944Discovery of americium
- 1944Discovery of curium
- 1944Tiến Quân Ca
- 1 January 1944Publication of State Anthem of the Soviet Union
- 1944Avery, MacLeod and McCarty show that DNA carries genes
- 19441944 becomes the warmest year on record
More in Science & technology
- 1916General relativity
- 2 November 1920KDKA begins the first commercial radio broadcasts
- 1931Big Bang theory proposed
- 1931Kurt Godel proves his incompleteness theorems
- 1939Discovery of francium
- 18 December 1944Launch of Le Monde
The era
This moment belongs to the Modern era (1914 CE to 1945 CE), world wars and a changing world. You can also browse everything in the 20th century.