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curium

Chemical element with symbol Cm and atomic number 96

Chemical elementchemical element synthetic elementQ1876

Also known as element 96 · Cm

Symbol: Cm
1
Sources
1.Stated in Atomic weights of the elements 2009 (IUPAC Technical Report)
View statement on Wikidata ↗
Atomic number: 96
Mass: 247.07 Da
1
Sources
1.Stated in PubChem“CURIUM”Retrieved 2016-10-19
View statement on Wikidata ↗
Melting point: 1,619 K
Boiling point: 3,383 K
Density: 13,510 kg/m³
Discovered by: Glenn Theodore Seaborg
Discovered: 1944

Overview

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia · Read full article · Text CC BY-SA 4.0

Curium is a synthetic chemical element; it has symbol Cm and atomic number 96. This transuranic actinide element was named after eminent scientists Marie and Pierre Curie, both known for their research on radioactivity. Curium was first intentionally made by the team of Glenn T. Seaborg, Ralph A. James, and Albert Ghiorso in 1944, using the cyclotron at Berkeley. They bombarded the newly discovered element plutonium with alpha particles. This was then sent to the Metallurgical Laboratory at the University of Chicago where a tiny sample of curium was eventually separated and identified. The discovery was kept secret until after the end of World War II. The news was released to the public in November 1947. Most curium is produced by bombarding uranium or plutonium with neutrons in nuclear reactors – one tonne of spent nuclear fuel contains ~20 grams of curium.

Overview

All data

102 statements · 24% with external sources · numbers in brackets are citations

Named after: Marie Curie
Pierre Curie
Unicode character: 鋦
1
Sources
1.cns11643.gov.tw/wordView.jsp?ID=152896Retrieved 2019-07-13
View statement on Wikidata ↗
Electronegativity: 1.28
Canonical SMILES: [Cm]
1
Sources
1.Stated in PubChem“CURIUM”Retrieved 2016-11-19
View statement on Wikidata ↗
Formula: Cm
1
Sources
1.Stated in PubChem“CURIUM”Retrieved 2016-11-19
View statement on Wikidata ↗
Part of: period 7 follows: americium · followed by: berkelium
actinide follows: americium · followed by: berkelium
Different from: Kiur
Permanent duplicated item: Q65411312
Ionic radius: 0.97 ångström charge number: 3 · coordination number: 6
0.85 ångström charge number: 4 · coordination number: 6
0.95 ångström charge number: 4 · coordination number: 8
Thermal conductivity: 10 watt per metre kelvin
Crystal system: hexagonal crystal system
Subclass of: actinide
heavy metal
f-block
Ionization energy: 5.9922 eV
1
Sources
1.“NIST Atomic Spectra Database, Ionization Energies”physics.nist.gov/asdRetrieved 2026-09-18
View statement on Wikidata ↗
Electron configuration: [Rn] 7s² 5f⁷ 6d¹
1
Sources
1.physics.nist.gov/asdRetrieved 2026-09-19
View statement on Wikidata ↗
IPA transcription: ˈkjʊəriəm language: English
Oxidation state: 3
4
5
6
Has characteristic: paramagnetism
Covalent radius: 169 picometre

On other databases

54 identifiers linking curium across the web's reference databases

Data quality

102

statements

24%

externally sourced

Source last edited October 3, 2026. AIDB refreshes this page daily.

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AIDB. (2026). curium (Q1876). Retrieved from https://aidb.si/e/curium-Q1876