Nickel has featured in alloys (such as cupro-nickel, used in coins) for thousands of years, but it was recognized as a chemical element in its own right only in 1751. That was when Swedish chemist Baron Axel Frederic Cronstedt (1722–65) first isolated pure nickel from a reddish ore (mineral-containing rock) called niccolite. Niccolite got its name because it superficially resembled copper ore, though contained no actual copper. Miners who tried to extract it blamed "Old Nick" (the devil) for stealing the copper—and the name stuck. These days, you'll find nickel among the transition elements in group 10 of the periodic table. It's very like iron in some ways and very like copper in others—hardly surprising, perhaps, given that it sits midway between them in the periodic table.

You might think nickel is fairly ordinary, but some of it is out of this world—quite literally. Most of the meteorites that hit Earth contain nickel (if you find a rock and it contains more than about five percent nickel, it's probably a meteorite). Nickel is a reasonably common metal: the 22nd most widespread element in Earth's crust (roughly twice as common as copper), which contains roughly 75 parts per million (0.0075 percent) nickel.