Lorenzo Romano Amedeo Carlo Avogadro di Quaregna e di Cerreto, Count of Quaregna and Cerreto (9 August 1776, Turin, Piedmont – 9 July 1856) was an Italian savant. He is most noted for his contributions to molecular theory, including what is known as Avogadro's law. In tribute to him, the number of elementary entities (atoms, molecules, ions or other particles) in 1 mole of a substance, 6.02214179(30)×1023, is known as the Avogadro constant.
Avogadro's Life
Amedeo Avagadro was born in 1776 in Turin, a city in northwestern Italy. Avogadro spent his entire life within 80 kilometers (50 miles) of Turin, far from the cultural centers where chemistry was becoming a science. He received a classical education in the humanities, earned a doctorate in law in 1796 at the age of twenty, and practiced law for the next ten years. After auditing some courses and studying science on his own, Avogadro made a radical career change. In 1806 he became a secondary school science teacher, and in 1820 a university physics professor. He married in 1815, had seven children, and by all accounts, led a very happy family life.
During his academic career, Avogadro's publications revealed an intense curiosity, sharp intuition, vivid imagination, rigorous logic, and independent judgment—traits of an outstanding scientists. His obituary in an Italian scientific journal remarked on his retiring disposition and on the simplicity of his life, and it noted his other researches, but it did not mention the 1811 paper on his molecular theory.
Avogadro's Molecular Theory
Avogadro made two assumptions about molecules in his 1811 publication. The first assumption is now known as Avogadro's hypothesis, sometimes also called the EVEN hypothesis. It stated that equal volumes of gases contain equal numbers (thus, even) of molecules at the same temperature and pressure. The hypothesis was based on a model of the gas state in which molecules are far apart and equally spaced so