96. Curium - Elementymology & Elements Multidict

Elementymology & Elements Multidict

This site comprises 120 pages of text and photos, one for each element, and several pages for access. – For captions or explanatory texts move your mouse over illustrations, links etc.

96
Curium
Curium – Kurium – Curium – Curio – キュリウム – Кюрий – 鋦
Cm
Multilingual dictionary

Indo-European
Curium Latin

— Germanic
Kurium Afrikaans
Curium Danish
Kurium German
Curium English
Kurium Faroese
Curium Frisian (West)
Kúrín Icelandic
Kurium Luxembourgish
Curium Dutch
Curium Norwegian
Curium Swedish

— Italic
Curio Aragonese
Chiriumu Aromanian
Curiu Asturian
Curi Catalan
Curio Spanish
Curium French
Curi Friulian
Curio Galician
Curio Italian
Cüri Lombard
Curi Occitan
Cúrio Portuguese
Curiu Romanian - Moldovan

— Slavic
Кюрий [Kjurij] Bulgarian
Curijum, ²Kirij Bosnian
Кюрый [kjuryj] Belarusian
Curium Czech
Kurij Croatian
Czur Kashubian
Кириум [Kirium] Macedonian
Kiur Polish
Кюрий [Kjurij] Russian
Curium Slovak
Kirij Slovenian
Киријум [Kirijum] Serbian
Кюрій [kjurij] Ukrainian

— Baltic
Kiuris Lithuanian
Kirijs Latvian
Kioris Samogitian

— Celtic
Kuriom Breton
Curiwm Welsh
Ciúiriam Gaelic (Irish)
Cùriam Gaelic (Scottish)
Curium Gaelic (Manx)
Curyum Cornish

— Other Indo-European
Κιουριο [kiourio] Greek
Կյուրիում [kyurium] Armenian
Kirium, ²Curiumi Albanian

— Indo-Iranian/Iranian
Küryûm Kurdish
Кюрий [kjurij] Ossetian
Кюрий [Kyuri'] Tajik

— Indo-Iranian/Indo-Aryan
কুরিয়াম [kuriẏāma] Bengali
کوریم [kwrym] Persian
ક્યૂરિયમનો [kyūriyamano] Gujarati
क्यूरियम [kyūriyama] Hindi

Finno-Ugric
Kuurium Estonian
Curium Finnish
Kûrium Hungarian
Кюрий [Kjurij] Komi
Кюрий [Kjurij] Mari
Кури [kuri] Moksha
Kuurium Võro

Altaic
Kürium Azerbaijani
Кюри [Kjuri] Chuvash
Кюрий [kjûrij] Kazakh
Кюрий [Kjurij] Kyrgyz
Кюри [kjuri] Mongolian
Curiyum Turkish
كىيۇرىي [kiyuriy] Uyghur
Kyuriy Uzbek

Other (Europe)
Kurioa Basque
კიურიუმი [kiuriumi] Georgian

Afro-Asiatic
كوريوم [kūriyūm] Arabic
קיוריום [kyurium] Hebrew
Kurjum, ²Curju Maltese

Sino-Tibetan
Khiu̍k (鋦) Hakka
キュリウム [kyuriumu] Japanese
퀴륨 [kuiryum] Korean
คูเรียม [khūriam] Thai
Curi Vietnamese
[ju2 / guk9] Chinese

Malayo-Polynesian
Curyo Cebuano
Kurium Indonesian
Curium Māori
Kurium Malay

Other Asiatic
ക്യൂറിയം [kyūṟiyam] Malayalam
கியூரியம் [kiyūriyam] Tamil

Africa
Kolumu Lingala
Curiamo Sesotho
Kuri Swahili

North-America
Curio Nahuatl

South-America
Kuryu Quechua

Creole
Kurimi Sranan Tongo

Artificial
Kuriumo Esperanto

New names
Curion Atomic Elements
Patherus Dorseyville
memory peg

Artificial radioactive element
melting point 1340 °C; 2444 °F
boiling point -- °C; -- °F
density 13.51 g/cc; 843.40 pounds/cubic foot
1944 Glenn T. Seaborg and co-workers, Chicago, Ill., USA
Marie Curie née Skłodowska (1867-1934) & Pierre Curie (1859-1906)

History & Etymology

First prepared in 1944 by Glenn T. Seaborg (1912-1999), Ralph A. James, and Albert Ghiorso working at the Manhattan Project at the wartime Metallurgical Laboratory in Chicago by bombardment of Plutonium with Helium ions. About the naming, Glenn Seaborg wrote in 1994:

"Thus element 95 would be chemically similar to the lanthanide element europium (63) and element 96 would be chemically similar to gadolinium (64). Using this concept, in 1944 and 1945 we synthesized and chemically identified elements 95 and 96, by analogy with their rare earth homologues, europium (element 63) and gadolinium (element 64). The new elements were subsequently named americium (95) and curium (96)." (note)


In his autobiography, Seaborg says about the naming of Americium and Curium (note):
At a meeting of the Heavy Isotopes Group at the Metallurgical Laboratory on March 5, 1946, I suggested that 95 and 96 be named "americium" and "curium" by analogy to the naming of their lanthanide homologs "europium" and "gadolinium." It was also pointed out that the +2 state of element 96 would be "cur-ious," but I replied that this oxidation state was not expected to exist.

The chemical symbol for Curium is Cm, chosen because "m" is the initial of Marie Curie.

False transuranic elements (#93-97)

Element #96 has got in 1934-38 the preliminary name Eka-Platinum by Otto Hahn, Lise Meitner and Fritz Strassmann in Germany, who thought they had found traces of several transuranium elements. In December of 1938, Hahn and Strassman found out that these radioactivities were not due to transuranium elements but were due to fission products. According to the Periodic Table of that time, without the Actinide series, element #96 is below Platinium (#78). According to the present Table, Eka-Platinum would be #110.

Several Slavic languages, and el, ja, he seem to have the English pronounciation of the name Curium transcribed, since the name Curie, pronounced in French, does not start with "kyoo" (/ˈkjʊri, kjʊˈriː/;), but with "kuh" [kyʁi].

Marie and Pierre Curie
Marie Curie née Skłodowska (Warsaw 1867-Passy, Haute-Savoie 1934), Polish scientist, who investigated radioactivity, and with her husband Pierre Curie (1859-1906) discovered Radium. They worked on radioactivity and in 1898 she reported the possible existence of a new, powerfully radioactive element in pitchblende ores. Her husband abandoned his own researches to assist her and discovered the radioactive elements Polonium and Radium in the pure state in 1902.
They both refused to take out a patent on their discoveries, and were jointly awarded the Davy Medal (1903) and the Nobel prize for physics (1903 with Becquerel, "in recognition of the extraordinary services they have rendered by their joint researches on the radiation phenomena discovered by Professor Henri Becquerel"). In 1904 Pierre was appointed to a chair in physics at the Sorbonne, and on his death in a street accident was succeeded by his wife. She wrote a Treatise on Radioactivity in 1910, and was awarded the Nobel Prize for Chemistry 1911. She died a victim of the radiation among which she had worked in her laboratory.

Further reading
  • Mary Elvira Weeks, Discovery of the Elements, comp. rev. by Henry M. Leicester (Easton, Pa.: Journal of Chemical Education, 1968), pp. 846-848.
  • Marie Curie and the Science of Radioactivity, On-line Exhibition
  • Glenn T. Seaborg, Ralph A. James, & Albert Ghiorso, The New Element Curium (Atomic Number 96). DOE-report. January 1948. (Full text in PDF available on-line).
  • Earl K. Hyde & Glenn T. Seaborg, Transurane : Teil A 1, I: Die Elemente. Gmelins Handbuch der anorganische Chemie, Ergänzungswerk zur 8. Aufl.; Band 7a. Weinheim/Bergstrasse: Chemie, 1973.
  • Glenn T. Seaborg, "My Romance with the Transuranium Elements" R&D Innovator 3, 12 (Dec. 1994). (on-line)

Sources Index of Persons Index of Alleged Elements