Discovery of Nickel

Nickel is present in metallic meteorites and so has been in use since ancient times.

Artifacts made from metallic meteorites have been found dating from as early as 5000 BC – for example beads in graves in Egypt

Iron is the most abundant element in metallic meteorites, followed by nickel.

It was not until the 1750s that nickel was discovered to be an element.

In the 1600s, a dark red ore, often with a green coating, had been a source of irritation for copper miners in Saxony, Germany. They believed the dark red substance was an ore of copper, but they had been unable to extract any copper from it.

In frustration, they had named it ‘kupfernickel’ which could be translated as ‘goblin’s copper’ because clearly, from the miners’ point of view at any rate, there were goblins or little imps at work, preventing them extracting the copper.

Between 1751 and 1754, the Swedish chemist Axel Cronstedt carried out a number of experiments to determine the true nature of kupfernickel. (We now know that kupfernickel is nickel arsenide, NiAs.)

After finding that its chemical reactions were not what he would have expected from a copper compound, he heated kupfernickel with charcoal to yield a hard, white metal, whose color alone showed it could not be copper. Its properties, including its magnetism, led him to conclude that he had isolated a new metallic element.

Cronstedt named the new element nickel, after the kupfernickel from which he had isolated it.

There is a satisfying symmetry in this discovery. Cronstedt was a pupil of George Brandt, who had discovered cobalt, which sits immediately to the left of nickel in the periodic table.

The names of both elements have their origins in the frustrations of miners caused by metal-arsenic ores: nickel arsenide and cobalt arsenide. Cobalt’s name is derived from the German ‘kobold’ meaning ‘goblin’ – a close relative of the creature from which nickel’s name was derived.

In cobalt’s case, miners mistakenly thought the ore contained silver, and called the ore kobold in frustration at the wicked goblins who they believed were preventing them getting silver from the ore.

In the early twentieth century, Ludwig Mond patented a process using nickel carbonyl to purify nickel. This process is still used today.

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