WHO WAS AVOGARDO?

 

AVOGARDO

Amedeo Avogadro, in full Lorenzo Romano Amedeo Carlo Avogadro, conte di Quaregna e Cerreto was born on  August 9, 1776, Turin, in the Kingdom of Sardinia and Piedmont [Italy].Italian mathematical physicist who showed in what became known as Avogadro’s law that, under controlled conditions of temperature and pressure, equal volumes of gases contain an equal number of molecules.

                                       

In honor of Avogadro's contributions to molecular theory, the number of molecules per mole of substance is named the "Avogadro constant", N_A. It is exactly 6.02214076×10²³ mol⁻¹.^[7] The Avogadro constant is used to compute the results of chemical reactions. It allows chemists to determine the amounts of substances produced in a given reaction to a great degree of accuracy.Avogadro is chiefly remembered for his molecular hypothesis, first stated in 1811, in which he claimed that equal volumes of all gases at the  same temperature and pressure contain the same number of molecules. He used this hypothesis further to explain the French chemist Joseph-Louis Gay-Lussac’s law of combining volumes of gases (1808) by assuming that the fundamental units of elementary gases may actually divide during chemical reactions. It also allowed for the calculation of the molecular weights of gases relative to some chosen standard. Avogadro and his contemporaries typically used the density of hydrogen gas as the standard for comparison. Thus, the following relationship was shown to exist:

                                          

In 1911, a meeting in Turin commemorated the hundredth anniversary of the publication of Avogadro's classic 1811 paper. King Victor Emmanuel III attended, and Avogadro's great contribution to chemistry was recognized.Rudolf Clausius, with his kinetic theory on gases proposed in 1857, provided further evidence for Avogadro's Law. Jacobus Henricus van 't Hoff showed that Avogadro's theory also held in dilute solutions.Avogadro is hailed as a founder of the atomic-molecular theory.

Only few things is known about Avogadro's personal life, which seems to have been sober and religious. He was married and had six children. He  was a member of the Royal Superior Council on Public Instruction.He left us on  July 9 1856.