Portrait of Amedeo Avogadro

Birthday profile

Amedeo Avogadro

Amedeo Avogadro, Italian physicist and chemist (died 1856)

Born
August 9, 1776
Died
July 9, 1856
Zodiac sign
Leo
Birth year
1776

About Amedeo Avogadro

Lorenzo Romano Amedeo Carlo Avogadro, Count of Quaregna and Cerreto (, also US:, Italian: [ameˈdɛːo avoˈɡaːdro]; 9 August 1776 – 9 July 1856) was an Italian scientist, most noted for his contribution to molecular theory now known as Avogadro's law, which states that equal volumes of gases under the same conditions of temperature and pressure will contain equal numbers of molecules. In tribute to him, the ratio of the number of elementary entities (atoms, molecules, ions or other particles) in a substance to its amount of substance (the latter having the unit mole), 6.02214076×1023 mol−1, is known as the Avogadro constant. This constant is denoted NA, and is one of the seven defining constants of the SI. == Biography == Amedeo Avogadro was born in Turin to a noble family of the Kingdom of Sardinia (now part of Italy) in the year 1776. He graduated in ecclesiastical law at the late age of 20 and began to practice. Soon after, he dedicated himself to physics and mathematics (then called positive philosophy), and in 1809 started teaching them at a liceo (high school) in Vercelli, where his family lived and had some property. In 1811, he published an article with the title Essai d'une manière de déterminer les masses relatives des molécules élémentaires des corps, et les proportions selon lesquelles elles entrent dans ces combinaisons ("Essay on a manner of Determining the Relative Masses of the Elementary Molecules of Bodies and the Proportions by Which They Enter These Combinations"), which contains Avogadro's hypothesis. Avogadro submitted this essay to Jean-Claude Delamétherie's Journal de Physique, de Chimie et d'Histoire naturelle ("Journal of Physics, Chemistry and Natural History"). In 1820, he became a professor of physics at the University of Turin. Turin was now the capital of the restored Savoyard Kingdom of Sardinia under Victor Emmanuel I. Avogadro was active in the revolutionary movement of March 1821. As a result, he lost his chair in 1823 (or, as the university officially declared, it was "very glad to allow this interesting scientist to take a rest from heavy teaching duties, in order to be able to give better attention to his researches").

Biography source: Wikipedia. The profile adds birthday-specific historical context from the Celebs Birthday Today editorial database.

Career and life highlights

The world when Amedeo Avogadro was born

Amedeo Avogadro was born in 1776. The year snapshot below places that birthday in its cultural and historical setting: the music and films people were following, the headlines shaping public life, and the everyday prices families encountered.

Culture in 1776

  • Best-selling bookCommon Sense by Thomas Paine

Headlines and milestones

  • Top headlineAmerican Declaration of Independence signed
  • Technology milestoneJames Watt installs first commercial steam engine
  • World population~770M

United States snapshot

  • U.S. leaderContinental Congress (no president yet)
  • U.S. population2.5M

1776 versus 2026

These figures put everyday life in Amedeo Avogadro's birth year beside the site's latest United States snapshot.

Measure17762026
Population2.5M341 million

Sources and editorial standards

This profile combines a biographical source with structured birthday and historical context. Sources recorded for this profile: Wikipedia, Encyclopaedia Britannica, Library of Congress, Wikidata. See our editorial policy for sourcing, corrections, and review standards.

Read the source biography on Wikipedia. Wikipedia text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License.