Simon van der Meer

In 1966, on a skiing trip with his friends in the Swiss Alps, Simon van der Meer met his future wife-to-be, Catharina M. Koopman. A short interval after their meeting, they married. He described this decision as the best he ever made.

He had two children; a daughter, Esther, in 1968, and a son, Mathijs in 1970.

He passed away on March 4, 2011, in Geneva, Switzerland at the age of 85.

Simon van der Meer was born on November 24, 1925, in The Hague, the Netherlands was the third child of Pieter van der Meer and Jetske Groeneveld. His father was a teacher and his mother’s family was in the teaching profession as well.

His parents were a constant source of encouragement and made considerable sacrifices to give him and his three sisters a quality education.

He was enrolled in the science section of the Gymnasium in The Hague and graduated in 1943. During the German occupation of the Netherlands, Dutch universities were closed and therefore, he continued attending the humanities section of the Gymnasium for the next two years.

A growing interest in Physics and technology had him assisting his physics teacher, U.Ph. Lely, with the preparation of numerous demonstrations. He loved electronics and filled his house with various gadgets.

In 1945, he enrolled at the “University of Technology”, Delft choosing to study Technical Physics. He graduated with an engineering degree in 1952.

Soon after his graduation in 1952, Van der Meer worked in the “Philips Research Laboratory” at Eindhoven. His job mainly involved developmental work on high-voltage equipment and electronics for electron microscopes.

The recently founded “European Organization for Nuclear Research, CERN” (ConseilEuropéen pour la RechercheNucléaire) laboratory in Geneva caught his fancy and he joined the organization in 1956. He remained active at CERN until his retirement in 1990.

His first task at CERN was under the leadership of J.B. Adams and C.A. Ramm. It concerned the design of the pole-face windings and multipole correction lenses for the 26 GeV Proton Synchrotron (PS).

For a year, in 1960, he worked on a separated antiproton beam which triggered the idea of the magnetic horn. This was a pulsed focusing device necessary for long-base-line neutrino facilities. This device has numerous applications in neutrino physics and the production of antiprotons.

In 1965, he joined a small group of physicists, led by F.J.M. Farley, working on the second “g-2” experiment for the precision measurement of the magnetic moment of the muon. Van der Meer designed a small storage ring (the g-2 ring) and was a participant throughout the experiment.

The technique of stochastic cooling of particle beams was invented by Van der Meer. His technique proved that antimatter beams could be concentrated with sufficient strength to collide proton and antiproton beams in the “Super Proton Synchrotron” that led to the discovery of “W” and “Z” particles. Though they were theoretically predicted earlier, their discovery was a significant breakthrough in particle physics.