Enrico Fermi

Fermi was an early contributor to quantum mechanics, and one of the founders of solid state physics and nuclear physics. The weak interaction is named after him, though its modern form, mediated by a gauge field, is different in detail.

Fermi was one of the first to calculate the consequences to solid-state physics of the postulate of antisymmetry of the wave function. After he died young, his name was attached (with Dirac) to the quantum statistics giving rise to the Pauli exclusion principle, namely, the Fermi-Dirac statistics. Particles obeying this form of statistics are now called fermions. The other possible quantum statistics is that of Bose and Einstein; particles obeying this form of statistics are called bosons.