Meer, van der, Simon (1925– )

Dutch physicist who was awarded the Nobel Prize for Physics in 1984 for his discovery of the W and Z elementary particles, the particles responsible for propagating the weak nuclear force. The discovery of these particles confirmed a theory developed in the early 1970s by Steven Weinberg, Sheldon Glashow, Abdus Salam, and others that suggested that the weak nuclear force and the electromagnetic force were linked. He shared the Nobel Prize shared with Carlo Rubbia.

The W and Z particles were discovered using the particle accelerators at CERN, the European particle physics laboratory near Geneva, to collide high-energy protons and antiprotons. The collisions produced a shower of particles, like the sparks of a firework, including the W and Z particles. Van der Meer's main contribution to the experiment was the design of a process, called stochastic cooling, which was used to produce large numbers of antiprotons.

Van der Meer was born in The Hague, Netherlands, and educated in engineering at the Technical University in Delft. In 1956 he joined the staff of CERN.