Many people in the high-energy physics community were deeply saddened to learn that Simon van der Meer passed away on 4 March. A true giant of modern particle physics, his contributions to accelerator science remain vital to the operation of accelerators such as the LHC.
Simon studied electrical engineering at Delft University. After a short time with Philips, he came to CERN in 1956 and remained with the laboratory until his retirement in 1990. He is best known for his invention of stochastic cooling, which made possible the conversion of CERN’s Super Proton Synchrotron to become the world’s first proton–antiproton collider. He was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics, jointly with Carlo Rubbia, in 1984 for the decisive contributions to this project, which led to the discovery of the W and Z particles.
Simon also developed the magnetic horn, which allows the production of focused beams of neutrinos, as well as the eponymous technique to measure luminosity in particle colliders: “van der Meer scans”.
A full tribute and obituary will appear in a later issue of CERN Courier.
