curium-242 was synthesized by bombarding an isotope with alpha particles
Curium The curium-242 isotope was produced in July–August 1944 by bombarding 239Pu with α-particles to produce curium with the release of a neutron:
Neutron In 1931, Walther Bothe and Herbert Becker found that if alpha particle radiation from polonium fell on beryllium, boron, or lithium, an unusually penetrating radiation was produced. The radiation was not influenced by an electric field, so Bothe and Becker assumed it was gamma radiation.[26][27] The following year Irène Joliot-Curie and Frédéric Joliot in Paris showed that if this "gamma" radiation fell on paraffin, or any other hydrogen-containing compound, it ejected protons of very high energy.[28] Neither Rutherford nor James Chadwick at the Cavendish Laboratory in Cambridge were convinced by the gamma ray interpretation.[29] Chadwick quickly performed a series of experiments that showed that the new radiation consisted of uncharged particles with about the same mass as the proton.[6][30][31] These particles were neutrons. Chadwick won the Nobel Prize in Physics for this discovery in 1935.[2]