The theoretical description of interacting fermions in one spatial dimension is simplified by the fact that the low‐energy excitations can be described in terms of bosonic degrees of freedom. This fermion–boson transmutation (FBT) which lies at the heart of the Luttinger liquid concept is presented in a way which does not require a knowledge of quantum field theoretical methods. As the basic facts can already be introduced for noninteracting fermions they are mainly discussed. As an application we use the FBT to present exact results for the low‐temperature thermodynamics and the occupation numbers in the microcanonical and the canonical ensemble. They are compared with the standard grand canonical results.