His father, Dr. William V. Curran (1929-2019), was a 60-year member of the American Chemical Society and the inventor of the third-generation cephalosporin antibiotic cefuzonam.

His younger brother Kevin J. Curran has won the Technical Achievement Award of the American Chemical Society Division of Organic Chemistry (2007).

Morris S. Kharasch discovered and pioneered halogen atom transfer addition reactions in an initial flowering period in the late 1940s and 1950s.

Other features include reliability, predictability, selectivity, functional group tolerance and inertness to water and other protic solvents.

The synthesis takes place over six steps centered on a cascade radical reaction that makes three bonds and two rings.

FMS is the first example of solution phase synthesis with separation tagging,[13] and it has been used to make many analogs and stereoisomers of complex natural products.

Curran also introduced fluorous solid phase extraction, a simple separation technique that enabled much subsequent work.

His awards from France include a Chaire Blaise Pascal (2006) from the Région Île-de-France, and a Doctorat Honoris Causa (honorary doctoral degree) from the Université Pierre et Marie Curie, Paris (2010).