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Amedeo AvogadroItalian scientist, chemist and physicist.
Date of Birth: 09.08.1776
Country:  Italy |
Content:
Biography of Amedeo Avogadro
Amedeo Avogadro, an Italian scientist, chemist, and physicist, was born in Turin. He completed his law degree at the University of Turin in 1792 but developed a strong interest in mathematics and physics, which he studied independently from 1800 onwards. Avogadro taught physics at a high school in Vercelli from 1809 to 1819. He then became a professor of physics at the University of Turin from 1820 to 1822 and again from 1834 to 1850.
Contributions to Science
Avogadro's scientific works spanned various areas of physics and chemistry. In 1811, he laid the foundations of molecular theory, consolidating the experimental data on the composition of substances and reconciling conflicting findings by Joseph Louis Gay-Lussac and John Dalton's atomistic principles. He also discovered Avogadro's law, which states that equal volumes of gases at the same temperature and pressure contain the same number of molecules.
Avogadro's name is associated with Avogadro's constant, which represents the number of molecules in one mole of an ideal gas. In 1811, he developed a method for determining molecular masses and correctly calculated the atomic masses of oxygen, carbon, nitrogen, chlorine, and other elements based on existing experimental data.
He determined the quantitative atomic composition of molecules in various substances, including water, hydrogen, oxygen, nitrogen, ammonia, nitrogen oxides, chlorine, phosphorus, arsenic, and antimony, correcting previous erroneous determinations. He also identified the composition of many compounds of alkali and alkaline earth metals, methane, ethyl alcohol, and ethylene.
Avogadro was the first to recognize the chemical similarities among nitrogen, phosphorus, arsenic, and antimony, elements that later formed the VA group in the Periodic Table. However, it was not until 1860, at the First International Congress of Chemists in Karlsruhe, that Avogadro's contributions to molecular theory were fully acknowledged.
Research in Electrochemistry and Thermodynamics
From 1820 to 1840, Avogadro focused on electrochemistry and studied the thermal expansion of materials, heat capacities, and atomic volumes. His conclusions align with Dmitri Mendeleev's later research on specific volumes of substances and modern understandings of the structure of matter.
Avogadro published a treatise called "Physics of Weighty Bodies, or a Treatise on the General Construction of Bodies" (1837-1841), in which he explored the concept of non-stoichiometric solids and the relationship between the properties of crystals and their geometry. This work laid the groundwork for future understandings of crystallography.
Despite his significant contributions, Avogadro's work was not fully appreciated during his lifetime. It was only later that his theories and discoveries became widely recognized and celebrated in the scientific community.
