Simon van der Meer
Dutch physicist (1925-2011) · Netherlands · Scientists · Died at 85
Simon van der Meer is read about 38 times a day, in 74 languages.
A typical day, 30 days to 15 October 2026
The middle day of the days counted, so one week of news cannot move it. The line under it is the last 390 days, one point a day.
Something wrong?He invented the technique that let physicists catch the particles responsible for radioactive decay - messengers so fleeting they'd never been seen until his trick made them visible.
A life in dates
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In their own words 1
, Above all, it's creative thinking that lies at the basis of discoveries.
Awards
In their orbit 2
About this person
Simon van der Meer was born in the Netherlands on 24 November 1925 and became a particle accelerator physicist. Working at CERN, he developed methods that made it possible to detect the W and Z particles - the fundamental communicators of the weak interaction, the force behind radioactive decay. The breakthrough required not just building bigger machines but inventing entirely new ways to control particle beams with enough precision to make collisions that would reveal these elusive messengers. In 1984 he shared the Nobel Prize in Physics with Carlo Rubbia for contributions to the project that led to their discovery. He died on 4 March 2011.
Scientists from the Netherlands 6
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