That number is Avogadro’s number, or Avogadro’s constant.
But the company went bankrupt.
Johann Josef Loschmidt
In 1856, Loschmidt became a high-school teacher in Vienna.
During his free time, Loschmidt conducted experiments in a small laboratory that the school allowed him to keep.
Figures of molecular structure, as they appeared in Loschmidts 1861 booklet Chemische Studien I.
Photo: Alfred Bader
In this same book, Loschmidt discussed benzene, a compound that baffled scientists.
Loschmidt was the first who saw that the atoms had to be arranged in a ring.
Unfortunately, Loschmidt got the arrangement wrong, which was corrected by German chemist August Kekule four years later.
Kekule insisted that the structure came to him in a dream.
Kekule received all the glory while Loschmidts contribution was pretty much forgotten.
Today, he is regarded as the principal founder of the theory of chemical structure.
Proposed structure of benzene.
The correct one is right-bottom.
Image :Ju/Wikimedia Commons
A great puzzle of the time was the size of molecules.
That number is now known as Loschmidt constant.
Thanks to Loschmidts work, other scientists were able to prove Avogadros hypothesis.
Lorenzo Romano Amedeo Carlo Avogadro
Loschmidt also contributed to Maxwell’s and Boltzman’s work on thermodynamics.
