Avogadro constant Avogadro constant In chemistry and physics, the Avogadro constant, named after scientist Amedeo Avogadro, is the number of constituent particles, usually atoms or molecules, that are contained in the amount of substance given by one mole. Thus, it is the proportionality factor that relates the molar mass of a substance to the mass of a sample. The Avogadro constant, often designated with the symbol "N" or "L", has the value in the International System of Units (SI). (The parentheses there represent the degree of uncertainty.) Previous definitions of chemical quantity involved the Avogadro number, a historical term closely related to
What Is Life? published in 1944. At that time DNA was not yet accepted as the carrier of hereditary information, which only was the case after the Hershey–Chase experiment of 1952. One of the most successful branches of physics at this time was statistical physics, and quantum mechanics, a theory which is also very statistical in its nature. Schrödinger himself is one of the founding fathers of quantum mechanics. Max Delbrück's thinking about the physical basis of life was an important influence on Schrödinger. However, long before the publication of "What is Life?", geneticist and 1946 Nobel-prize winner H. J. Muller had in