Axel Fredrik Cronstedt, Date of Birth, Place of Birth, Date of Death
TweetAxel Fredrik Cronstedt
Swedish mineralogist and chemist
Date of Birth: 
Place of Birth: Nykvarn Municipality, Sweden
About Axel Fredrik Cronstedt
- Baron Axel Fredrik Cronstedt (/kroonstet/ 23 December 1722 – 19 August 1765) was a Swedish mineralogist and chemist who discovered nickel in 1751 as a mining expert with the Bureau of Mines.
- He found the mineral, which Cronstedt described as kupfernickel, in the cobalt mines of Los, Hälsingland, Sweden.
- This name arises because the ore has a similar appearance to copper (kupfer) and a mischievous sprite (nickel) was supposed by miners to be the cause of their failure to extract copper from it.
- Cronstedt named it nickel in 1754.
- He was a pupil of Georg Brandt, the discoverer of cobalt.
- Cronstedt is one of the founders of modern mineralogy and is described as the founder by John Griffin in his 1827 A Practical Treatise on the Use of the Blowpipe. Cronstedt also discovered the mineral scheelite in 1751.
- He named the mineral tungsten, meaning heavy stone in Swedish.
- Carl Wilhelm Scheele later suggested that a new metal could be extracted from the mineral.
- In English, this metal is now known as the element tungsten. In 1753, Cronstedt was elected a member of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences. In 1756, Cronstedt coined the term zeolite after heating the mineral stilbite with a blowpipe flame.
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