Amedeo Avogadro

He married quite late in life. He tied the knot with Felicita Mazzé in 1815. The couple had six children.

He died on 9 July 1856, at the age of 79.

A hardworking and modest person, he did not receive much acclaim for his works during his lifetime though his contributions to science were recognized years after his death.

Lorenzo Romano Amedeo Carlo Avogadro di Quaregna e di Cerreto was born on 9 August 1776, in Turin, Piedmont-Sardinia into a noble family. His father was Filippo Avogadro, conte di Quaregna e Cerreto, a distinguished lawyer and senator in the Piedmont region of northern Italy.

He was a bright young man who excelled in his studies. He followed in his father’s footsteps and studied law, graduating in jurisprudence in 1792. He proceeded to receive his doctorate in ecclesiastical law four years later.

He ventured into a legal career and became secretary to the prefecture of Eridano in 1801. Around this time he grew increasingly interested in physics and mathematics and began studying these subjects privately with the guidance of the prominent mathematical physicist Professor Vassalli Eandi.

Soon he also began his scientific researches, focusing primarily on electricity. He collaborated with his brother Felice to publish his first scientific paper in 1803. This paper examined the electrical behavior of salt solutions.

In 1804, he became a corresponding member of the Academy of Sciences of Turin. By this time he had realized that he was meant for a scientific career and left his legal practice.

He embarked into academics and started teaching mathematics and physics at a high school in Turin in 1806. He became a professor of natural philosophy at the Royal College of Vercelli in 1809, a post he held until 1820.

It was in 1811 that he first stated what would become his biggest contribution to science: the hypothesis that equal volumes of all gases at the same temperature and pressure contain the same number of molecules. He also explained the French chemist Joseph-Louis Gay-Lussac’s law of combining volumes of gases using this hypothesis.

He hypothesized what later became known as the Avogadro's law. It is an experimental gas law relating volume of a gas to the amount of substance of gas present. The law states that, "equal volumes of all gases, at the same temperature and pressure, have the same number of molecules."

In 1811, Avogadro proposed that the volume of a gas (at a given pressure and temperature) is proportional to the number of atoms or molecules regardless of the nature of the gas. The Avogadro constant named after him, is the number of constituent particles, usually atoms or molecules that are contained in the amount of substance given by one mole.