Simon van der Meer
| Simon van der Meer | |
|---|---|
Simon van der Meer (left) and wife are received by Queen Beatrix and Prince Claus in 1985
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| Born |
24 November 1925 The Hague, The Netherlands |
| Died | 4 March 2011 (aged 85) Geneva, Switzerland |
| Residence | Switzerland |
| Nationality | Dutch |
| Fields | Physics |
| Institutions | CERN |
| Alma mater | TU Delft |
| Known for | |
| Notable awards |
Duddell Medal and Prize (1982) Nobel Prize in Physics (1984) |
Simon van der Meer (24 November 1925 – 4 March 2011) was a Dutch particle accelerator physicist who shared the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1984 with Carlo Rubbia for contributions to the CERN project which led to the discovery of the W and Z particles, two of the most fundamental constituents of matter.
One of four children, Simon van der Meer was born and grew up in The Hague, the Netherlands, in the family of teachers. He was educated at the city's gymnasium, graduating in 1943 during the German occupation of the Netherlands. He studied Technical Physics at the Delft University of Technology, and received an engineer's degree in 1952. After working for Philips Research in Eindhoven on high-voltage equipment for electron microscopy for a few years, he joined CERN in 1956 where he stayed until his retirement in 1990.
He married Catharina M. Koopman in the mid-1960s; they had two children: Esther van der Meer (daughter) and Mathijs van der Meer (son). He also had a sister: Ge van der Meer, and a granddaughter.
Simon’s contributions to CERN and accelerator physics speak for themselves.
These started with magnet design in the 28 GeV Proton Synchrotron (PS) era in the 1950s and the 1961 invention of a pulsed focusing device, known as the ‘van der Meer horn’. Such devices are necessary for long-base-line neutrino facilities and are used even today.
That was followed in the 1960s by the design of a small storage ring for a physics experiment studying the anomalous magnetic moment of the muon. Soon after and in the following decade, he did some very innovative work on the regulation and control of powersupplies for the Intersecting Storage Rings (ISR) and, later, the SPS.
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