On the Quantization of the Monoatomic Ideal Gas

Abstract

An english translation of the original work of Enrico Fermi on the quantization of the monoatomic ideal gas, is given in this paper. Fermi introduced here for the first time the statistical law obeyed by most of the particles in nature: Fermi-Dirac statistics. The formalism that he used is based on the quantization of the monoatomic ideal gas in a harmonic trap. This trappping configuration is similar to that used in current experiments on trapped Fermi gases.