Atomic mass
One mole of a substance always contains almost exactly the "standard atomic weight" or "molar mass" of that substance; however, this may or may not be true for the "atomic mass," depending on whether or not the element exists naturally in more than one isotope. For example, the standard atomic weight of iron is 55.847 g/mol, and therefore one mole of iron as commonly found on earth has a mass of 55.847 grams. The "atomic mass" of the Fe isotope is 55.935 u and one mole of Fe atoms would then in theory have a mass of 55.935 g, but such amounts of pure Fe have never been found (or separated out) on Earth. However, there are 22 mononuclidic elements of which essentially only a single isotope is found in nature (common examples are fluorine, sodium, aluminum and phosphorus) and for these elements the standard atomic weight and atomic mass are the same. Samples of these elements therefore may serve as reference standards for certain atomic mass values.
Atomic mass
In the 20th century, until the 1960s chemists and physicists used two different atomic-mass scales. The chemists used a "atomic mass unit" (amu) scale such that the natural mixture of oxygen isotopes had an atomic mass 16, while the physicists assigned the same number 16 to only the atomic mass of the most common oxygen isotope (O, containing eight protons and eight neutrons). However, because oxygen-17 and oxygen-18 are also present in natural oxygen this led to two different tables of atomic mass. The unified scale based on carbon-12, C, met the physicists' need to base the scale on a pure isotope, while being numerically close to the chemists' scale.