curium
/ˈkjʊ.ɹi.əm/ noun
- noun (chemistry) 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.
- noun (countable) An atom of this element.
Synonyms
Etymology
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.
Sources: Wiktionary · WordNet 3.0 — from the Wiktionary entry “curium”, CC BY-SA 4.0. Details