Overview

The nineteenth century saw many advances in our understanding of gases, their behavior, and their uses. Charles, Gay-Lussac, Faraday, Avogadro, and others contributed to this knowledge, formulating some of the basic laws that are known to govern the behavior of gases under a variety of physical and chemical conditions. This knowledge, the ability to liquefy and to compress gases, and other advances have led, in turn, to a great many inventions and discoveries that have profoundly impacted the life of virtually everyone on Earth.

Background

It was not until the early seventeenth century that scientists began to realize that gases exist as a separate form of matter. In the mid seventeenth century (1660-...