Fisica de' corpi ponderabili, ossia Trattato della costituzione generale de' corpi

Turin: Stamperia Reale, 1838. 1st Edition. Hardcover. Very Good. 1st Edition. Hardcover. 1837-1841. 4 volumes. 8vo (220 x 141 mm). [4], xxxi [1], 910, [2] pp., 9 engraved plates; xv [1], 980 pp., 5 plates; xiii [1], 932 pp., 2 plates; xiii [1], 926, [2], LIII [1], [2] pp., 2 plates. Half-title to each volume; blank leaves present as called for; general index and final "con permissione" leaf in vol. IV. In total 18 lithographed folding plates. Bound in uniform contemporary half calf over marbled boards, flat spines ruled and lettered in gilt, blue-sprinkled edges (light wear to extremities, front flyleaf of vol. IV stuck to pastedown). Text and plates crisp and bright throughout, half-title of vol. I with light smudge, occasional very minor spotting. Provenance: Libreria Antiquaria Mediolanum, Milan (stickers to front-pastedown of vol. I). A fine set in untouched bindings; collated and complete. ----

FIRST AND ONLY EDITION of Avogadro's major work, containing the first announcement of 'Avogadro's Number'. "Avogadro's treatise contains an account of his famous hypothesis that the number of molecules in a gas, is always proportional to the volume. Avogadro's hypothesis allowed molecular weights to be determined directly, as the relative wights of the molecules of any two gases are the same as the ratios of the densities of these two gases under equal conditions. Avogadro introduced this hypothesis in his "Essai d'une maniere de determiner les masses relatives des molecules elementaires des corps, et les proportions selon lesquelles; elles entrent dans ces combinations," published in Vol. 73 of the Journal de physique (1811)" (Norman).
"Struck by the discovery of Gay-Lussac's volumetric law [Avogadro] detected an incompatibility between this law and Dalton's hypothesis attributing chemical combination to the simple juxtaposition of a small number of 'atoms' of different bodies; To resolve the contradiction, he formulates the hypothesis that gases under the same conditions all contain the same number of molecules in equal volumes, and proposes to admit that, during chemical combinations, gaseous molecules can divide into two or more parts. He shows how this hypothesis, combined with the results of Gay-Lussac's experiments, can be used to calculate the vapor volume of a number of simple bodies whose gas densities are not known" (M. Scheidecker-Chevallier, L'Hypothèse d'Avogadro (1811) et d'Ampère (1814): la distinction atome/molécule et la théorie de la combinaison chimique, in Revue d'histoire des sciences, 1997, vol. 50, no. 1, p. 162).
Because his work was published at first only in Italian, the importance of his hypothesis was largely overlooked until many years later. Based on his hypothesis, it was possible to arrive at a constant that determined the number of molecules in a mole (a unit of measurement of the amount of a substance), equal to 6.02214076 x 10^23. Years after his death, this number was named the "Avogadro number" in his honor. References: Norman 89; Honeyman 168. - Visit our website to see more images!