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
The first scientists to determine relative atomic masses were John Dalton and Thomas Thomson between 1803 and 1805 and Jöns Jakob Berzelius between 1808 and 1826. Relative atomic mass ("Atomic weight") was originally defined relative to that of the lightest element, hydrogen, which was taken as 1.00, and in the 1820s Prout's hypothesis stated that atomic masses of all elements would prove to be exact multiples of that of hydrogen. Berzelius, however, soon proved that this was not even approximately true, and for some elements, such as chlorine, relative atomic mass, at about 35.5, falls almost exactly halfway between two integral multiples of that of hydrogen. Still later, this was shown to be largely due to a mix of isotopes, and that the atomic masses of pure isotopes, or nuclides, are multiples of the hydrogen mass, to within about 1%.