Nicola Cabibbo (10 April 1935 – 16 August 2010) was an Italian physicist, best known for his work on the weak interaction. He was also the president of the Italian National Institute of Nuclear Physics from 1983 to 1992, and from 1993 until his death he was the president of the Pontifical Academy of Sciences. He was born in Rome.After his death in 2011, the Franklin Institute awarded him with the Benjamin Franklin Medal in Physics.