Simon van der Meer Quotes

Simon van der Meer — Dutch Physicist born on November 24, 1925,

Simon van der Meer was a Dutch particle accelerator physicist who shared the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1984 with Carlo Rubbia for contributions to the CERN project which led to the discovery of the W and Z particles, two of the most fundamental constituents of matter... (wikipedia)

Under these conditions it is not astonishing that learning was highly prized; in fact, my parents made sacrifices to be able to give their children a good education.

My father was a schoolteacher and my mother came from a teacher's family.

After developing a primitive theory (1968) I therefore did not pursue this subject. However, the work was taken up by others and in 1974 the first experiments were done in the ISR.

I visited the Gymnasium in The Hague and passed my final examination (in the sciences section) in 1943.

Nevertheless, if I have at times been able to make original contributions in the accelerator field, I cannot help feeling that to a certain extent my slightly amateur approach in physics, combined with much practical experience, was an asset.

Simon van der Meer Quotes

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