Swedish mineralogist and chemist · 1722–1765
Axel Fredrik Cronstedt
Axel Fredrik Cronstedt discovered nickel in 1751 in an ore that miners had cursed for years.
How Nickel was found
German miners called a reddish ore kupfernickel, “copper-demon”, because it looked as though it should contain copper but none could be extracted. Cronstedt analysed the mineral from a cobalt mine in Hälsingland and obtained a hard, white metal unlike copper.
He named the new metal nickel. Some chemists insisted it was a mixture of cobalt, iron and arsenic, until Torbern Bergman confirmed in 1775 that it was an element.
Life and career
Born 1722 · Died 1765
Cronstedt was born in Södermanland to a noble family and studied at Uppsala under Johan Gottschalk Wallerius and Georg Brandt. He worked for the Swedish Bureau of Mines.
He proposed classifying minerals by their chemical composition rather than their appearance, and in 1756 named zeolites, minerals that seem to boil when heated, from the Greek for “boiling stone”.
Also known for
- Coined the name zeolite
- Chemical classification of minerals
Discovered in the same era
Other elements identified within ten years of 1751.