Simon Van der Meer
Van der Meer, Simon (1925-) is a Dutch physicist who shared the 1984 Nobel Prize in physics with Italian physicist Carlo Rubbia for their discovery of the W and Z bosons.
Van der Meer was born in 1925. He studied technical physics at the University of Technology in Delft and received an engineering degree in 1952. He then worked at the Phillips Research Laboratory in Eindhoven until 1956, when he joined the staff of the European Center for Nuclear Research (CERN). He remained there until his retirement in 1990.
In the 1970's, van der Meer and his colleagues began looking for W and Z bosons, subatomic force-carrying particles by which electromagnetism and the weak force are transmitted. Scientists in the 1960's had theorized that these particles existed as carriers of electromagnetism and the weak force, two of the four fundamental forces recognized by quantum theory. To look for these particles, Rubbia suggested redesigning a particle accelerator called the proton synchrotron (PS) at CERN so that two particle beams, one of protons and one of antiprotons, could be accelerated in opposite directions. The beams would then collide at given positions in the accelerator ring, releasing enough energy to allow the formation of the W and Z particles. However, antiprotons are unstable, and maintaining enough of them in the accelerator tubes was problematic.
Van der Meer solved the problem by designing a system called stochastic cooling, which monitored and adjusted a beam of protons in the PS, keeping it on course even when the density of particles in the accelerator tube was quite high. Van der Meer's design enabled the PS to be converted to a Super Proton Synchrotron (SPS) in 1983, and the W and Z particles were discovered that year.