Etymology

curium

cur·i·um
C3U1R1I1U1M3

Today it means: A radioactive and highly fissile, silver-grey, metallic, transuranic chemical element (symbol Cm) with an atomic number of 96, which is artificially produced in a particle accelerator. Full definition →

English Curie ← French Curie ← Old French éscuerie
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The story

  1. Old Frenchéscuerie
  2. FrenchCurie
  3. EnglishCurie
  4. English todaycurium

From Curie + -ium (suffix forming names of metallic elements), coined by the American scientists Glenn T. Seaborg (1912–1999), Ralph A. James (1920–1973), and Albert Ghiorso (1915–2010), who synthesized the element in 1944 and named it in honour of Pierre Curie (1859–1906) and Marie Skłodowska Curie (1867–1934) who, with Henri Becquerel, were awarded the 1903 Nobel Prize in Physics for discoveries in radioactivity.

Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.