Simon van der Meer

This is a Dutch name. The family name is van der Meer, not Meer.

Simon van der Meer (24 November 1925 – 4 March 2011) was a Dutch particle accelerator physicist. He won the Nobel prize in physics. Another physicist, Carlo Rubbia, also won this prize. He won the prize because of his work for the CERN project. This led to the discovery of W and Z particles, which are the two most important things in matter.

 Biography 
Simon van der Meer was one of four children. He was raised in The Hague, Netherlands. His father was a school teacher, and his mother came from a family of teachers. He went to school at the city's gymnasium. He graduated in 1943 when the German army had control of the Netherlands. In 1945, van der Meer went to the Delft University of Technology. He earned an engineer's degree there in 1952. He joined CERN in 1956, and he stayed there until he retired in 1990. He was elected a member of the Academia Europaea in 1991.

In 1966, when van der Meer was skiing with his friends in the Swiss mountains, he met Catharina M. Koopman, who became his wife. They had two children – Esther (born 1968) and Mathijs (born 1970).

 Scientific work 
After getting his engineer's degree in 1952, Simon van der Meer worked for the Philips Research Laboratory in Eindhoven. When he was there, he was mainly working on high-voltage equipment and electronics for electron microscopes. In 1956, he moved to CERN, which was new at the time. When he first started at CERN, his work was mainly on technical design, and power supplies. While he was working at CERN, he invented the idea of stochastic cooling, which led to the discovery of W and Z bosons. In 1984, van der Meer and Carlo Rubbia won the Nobel Prize in Physics for their work with the project.

 Related pages 
W and Z bosons
Nobel Prize
CERN

 References 

 Other websites 
Official website of the Nobel prize

Category:1925 births
Category:2011 deaths
Category:Dutch Nobel Prize winners
Category:Dutch physicists
Category:Members of Academia Europaea
Category:People from The Hague
Category:Nobel Prize in Physics winners