Amedeo Avogadro - Response To The Theory

Response To The Theory

The scientific community did not give great attention to his theory, so Avogadro's hypothesis was not immediately accepted. André-Marie Ampère achieved the same results three years later by another method (in his Sur la détermination des proportions dans lesquelles les corps se combinent d'après le nombre et la disposition respective des molécules dont leurs particules intégrantes sont composées -- On the Determination of Proportions in which Bodies Combine According to the Number and the Respective Disposition of the Molecules by Which Their Integral Particles Are Made), but the same indifference was shown to his theory as well.

Only through studies by Charles Frédéric Gerhardt and Auguste Laurent on organic chemistry was it possible to demonstrate that Avogadro's law explained why the same quantities of molecules in a gas have the same volume.

Unfortunately, related experiments with some inorganic substances showed seeming exceptions to the law. This was finally resolved by Stanislao Cannizzaro, as announced at Karlsruhe Congress in 1860, four years after Avogadro's death. He explained that these exceptions were due to molecular dissociations at certain temperatures, and that Avogadro's law determined not only molecular masses, but atomic masses as well.

In 1911, a meeting in Turin commemorated the hundredth anniversary of the publication of Avogadro's classic 1811 paper. King Victor Emmanuel III attended. Thus, Avogadro's great contribution to chemistry was recognized.

Rudolf Clausius, with his kinetic theory on gases, gave another confirmation of Avogadro's Law. Jacobus Henricus van 't Hoff showed that Avogadro's theory also held in dilute solutions.

Avogadro is hailed as a founder of the atomic-molecular theory.