Amedeo Avogadro

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Amedeo Avogadro

Lorenzo Romano Amedeo Carlo Avogadro, Conte di Quaregna e Cerreto (born August 9, 1776 in Turin , † July 9, 1856 ibid) was an Italian physicist and chemist .

Life

Mémoire

Avogadro first studied law; he came from a family of lawyers. In 1796 he became a doctor of canon law . Since 1800 he studied mathematics and physics , which corresponded to his inclinations. In 1803 it was first published on physics. In 1809 he became a professor of natural philosophy at the Real Collegio in Vercelli . Here he worked out his molecular hypothesis. In 1820 he was appointed professor of mathematical physics at the University of Turin . In 1840 he was elected a member of the Leopoldina Scholars' Academy .

Avogadro dealt with the relationship between the electrochemical series and the affinity of the elements, the specific heat of gases and atomic and molar volumes. His aim was to describe the chemical properties of the compounds through physical properties.

In 1811 he published his hypothesis that equal volumes of different ideal gases at the same temperature and pressure contain the same number of particles ( molecules ) (see also Avogadro's law , Avogadro's constant ). He imagined the elementary gases made up of molecules of two atoms. The work went unnoticed for a long time, so that André-Marie Ampère expressed the same idea in 1814. This view contrasted with that of Jöns Jacob Berzelius , one of the great chemists of the 19th century. It was not until 1860 that Avogadro's idea was taken up at the Chemists' Congress in Karlsruhe , represented there by his student Stanislao Cannizzaro . This made it possible to resolve numerous contradictions in the terms of the atom, the molecule and the equivalent.

The mineral Avogadrite (since 1926), the asteroid (12294) Avogadro (since 2004) and the lunar crater Avogadro (since 1970) were named after him. He is the namesake of the Università degli Studi del Piemonte Orientale "Amedeo Avogadro" .

Fonts

  • Fisica de 'corpi ponderabili ossia Trattato della costituzione generale de' corpi , 4 volumes, Turin 1837–1841.

literature

Web links

Commons : Amedeo Avogadro  - collection of images, videos and audio files


Individual evidence

  1. Amadeo Avogadro's membership entry at the German Academy of Sciences Leopoldina , accessed on May 23, 2016.