Nickel was discovered by the Swedish mineralogist and chemist Baron Axel Fredrik Cronstedt in 1751. He isolated nickel from a mineral called niccolite (also known as kupfernickel) while working at a cobalt mine in Los, Sweden. Initially expecting to extract copper from the ore, Cronstedt instead obtained a new white metal, which he named nickel after the German miners' term "kupfernickel" (meaning "false copper" or "devil's copper") because they thought the ore was deceptive and did not yield copper as expected.
