Gay-Lussac's law gases and the gaseous products can be expressed in simple whole numbers. For example, Gay-Lussac found that 2 volumes of hydrogen and 1 volume of oxygen would react to form 2 volumes of gaseous water. Based on Gay-Lussac's results, Amedeo Avogadro theorized that, at the same temperature and pressure, equal volumes of gas contain equal numbers of molecules (Avogadro's law). This hypothesis meant that the previously stated result could also be expressed as The law of combining gases was made public by Joseph Louis Gay-Lussac in 1808. Avogadro's hypothesis, however, was not initially accepted by chemists until the Italian chemist
History of chemistry which he later analyzed chemically. In 1808 Gay-Lussac announced what was probably his single greatest achievement: from his own and others' experiments he deduced that gases at constant temperature and pressure combine in simple numerical proportions by volume, and the resulting product or products—if gases—also bear a simple proportion by volume to the volumes of the reactants. In other words, gases under equal conditions of temperature and pressure react with one another in volume ratios of small whole numbers. This conclusion subsequently became known as "Gay-Lussac's law" or the "Law of Combining Volumes". With his fellow professor at the École