Amedeo Avogadro: biography and contributions of this Italian physicist and chemist.

Summary of the life of Amedeo Avogadro, one of the most influential physicists and chemists in history.

Amedeo Avogadro is known for the formula that he developed and to which he gave his name, Avogadro's law, based on the fact that when different substances in the same molecule are in contact with each other, they are not equal.Avogadro's law, based on the fact that when different substances in a gaseous state are at the same temperature and pressure, they also contain the same number of molecules.

In addition to extensive teaching and research, Avogadro was involved in politics in his country, which resulted in the loss of his professorship at the University of Turin, where he worked for several years.

Here we will review the life of this researcher by means of a biography of Amedeo Avogadroand his main contributions to science will also be discussed.

A brief biography of Amedeo Avogadro

Lorenzo Romano Amedeo Carlo Avogadro, Count of Quaregna and Cerreto, better known as Amedeo Avogadro, was born in Turin on August 9, 1776.. He was the son of a magistrate named Filippo Avogadro.

Academic training

In 1796 Amedeo Avogadro graduated in canon law, following in his father's footsteps, and then enrolled as a lawyer in the city of Turin.

However, his work did not excite him, while he was passionate about mathematics and physics, subjects to which he devoted himself.He was a self-taught mathematician and physicist. For this reason, he decided to begin his studies in physics and mathematics in 1800.

In 1809, at the age of 33, he got a job as a physics teacher at the Royal College, a high school in Vercelli, a town in northern Italy.

While in Vercelli, he combined teaching with his work as a researcher.He discovered that when two volumes of hydrogen gas were combined with one volume of oxygen gas, two volumes of water vapor were produced.

Stage of great development as a scientist: discovery of Avogadro's law.

While Amedeo Avogadro continued his work as a professor of physics at the Royal College, he did not stop researching and in 1811 he elaborated a hypothesis that several years later became famous within the scientific community, named Avogadro's law, which will be explained in more detail in the next chapter.which will be explained in greater detail later.

Subsequently, he sent the report on his theory of Avogadro's law to the Journal de Physique, entitled "Essay on a way of determining the relative masses of the elementary molecules of bodies, and the proportions according to which they enter into these combinations".

It should be noted that this test did not gain the importance it deserved until 50 years later, mainly thanks to the work of the Italian chemist Cannizzaro, who presented Avogadro's theory at a Congress of chemists in 1860 in Karlsruhe (Germany), being Cannizzaro's reformist principle, which meant the implementation of a concept and also a reliable method to determine the atomic weights, as well as the corresponding composition formulas of the substances.

At that time, in expounding the theory that he had developed he had to overcome several difficulties, one of them being the great confusion that existed to differentiate atoms and molecules, so that he made a great contribution to the study of the theory that he had developed.He made a great contribution by clarifying the differences between these two concepts.

Although it is true that he did not use the word atom in his research, because the words atom and molecule were considered synonyms, Avogadro differentiated three kinds of molecules, one of them being called the elementary molecule, which is what is known today as an atom, thus leaving a first step in the clarification between atoms and molecules.

In 1814, Avogadro published his "Memoir on the relative masses of the molecules of simple bodies, or expected densities of their gas, and on the constitution of some of their compounds, to serve subsequently as an essay on the same subject", whose research dealt with the density of gases.

As for his personal life, in 1815, Avogadro married Felicita Mazzé; together they had six children.together they had six children.

First period as professor of physics at the University of Turin

After teaching physics at the Royal College of Vercelli for 11 years, in 1820 Avogadro stopped teaching at this secondary school, and got a position as professor of physics at the renowned University of Turin, where he soon became the first professor of mathematical physics (known in those days as sublime physics).

The year after starting at the University of Turin (1821), Avogadro published a memoir called "New considerations on the theory of determinate proportions in combinations, and on the determination of the masses of the molecules of bodies" and shortly thereafter published "Memoir on how to include organic compounds in the ordinary laws of determinate proportions".

Outside the academic context, Avogadro was part of the political revolution movements that opposed the king of Sardinia, causing him to lose his chair at the university in 1823.He retained only a modest pension and the title of professor emeritus.

Restitution at the University of Turin and the culmination of his scientific works.

In 1833 Avogadro manages to regain his former position at the University of Turin, thanks to his great work as a researcher, for which his works were beginning to stand out.

In 1941 Amedeo Avogadro published his scientific works in four volumes entitled "Fisica dei corpi ponderabili, ossia Trattato della costituzione materiale di' corpi" (Physics of ponderable bodies or treatise on the material constitution of bodies), which served to develop the laws, hypotheses and theories of authors after Avogadro.

In 1850 he finished his career as a professor at the University of Turin and, six years later, he died in his hometown, Turin, at the age of 79.

Discoveries of Amedeo Avogadro

These are the main scientific contributions of Amedeo Avogadro of Amedeo Avogadro.

Avogadro's Law

To elaborate his theory, Avogadro followed John Dalton's atomic theory about the vectors of motion in a molecule.

Dalton's research consisted in establishing the importance of atomic weights, i.e., the relative weights of the particles that make up bodies.that is, the relative weight of the particles that make up bodies. That is why Dalton's theory for calculating atomic weights was a great advance for science and allowed other scientists to advance on the basis of his discovery.

Through the calculation of the weight of atoms, John Dalton was also able to develop the law of multiple proportions, which was supported by the French physicist and chemist Louis Joseph Gay-Lussac, is based on the fact that when two or more elements are combined to create different compounds, once the immovable mass of one of the compounds is given, the mass of the other compound is combined with that immovable mass, and the second has as a relation canonical and indistinct numbers.

On the basis of Dalton's theory, Avogadro developed a way to calculate in a simple way the mass of the molecules of bodies that have the possibility of passing to a gaseous state and the numerical quantity of these molecules..

His hypothesis in this regard stated that when different gases have the same volume and are at similar temperature and pressure conditions, the number of molecules they contain is the same.

Avogadro's number

Avogadro's number, now called Avogadro's constant, is used in chemistry to designate the number of particles that can be found in a gas. to designate the number of particles constituting a substance, commonly molecules or atoms, that can be found in the amount of one mole of that substance..

It is a ratio factor that allows relating the molar mass of a substance (it is the physical quantity that allows defining the mass of that substance per unit quantity of substance, expressed in kg/mol) and the mass that is present in a sample.