fermion
/ˈfɜːmɪɒn/ noun
Forms fermions
- noun (particle physics, Standard Model) Any elementary or composite particle that has half-integer spin and thus obeys Fermi–Dirac statistics and the Pauli exclusion principle (equivalently, a particle for which the wavefunction of any system of identical such particles changes sign whenever two are swapped); a baryon, a lepton or a quark; “The fermions treated by the Standard Model are the (composite) baryons and the (elementary) leptons and quarks.”
Etymology
From Fermi + -on. Named after Italian-American physicist Enrico Fermi. Coined by English physicist Paul Dirac in 1945 in a lecture titled "Developments in Atomic Theory".
Sources: Wiktionary — from the Wiktionary entry “fermion”, CC BY-SA 4.0. Details