The famous ‘Van der Meer scans’ are indispensable even today in the LHC experiments; without these, the precision of the calibration of the luminosity at the intersection points in the Collider would be much lower. For the new SPS machine constructed in the early seventies, he proposed that the generation of the reference voltages for the bending and quadrupole supplies should be based on measurements of the field along the cycle, and gave an outline of the correction algorithms. His proposal resulted in the first ever computer-controlled closed-loop system for a geographically distributed system, as the 7 km circumference SPS was; this was a no simple feat for the early 1970s. Measurements of the main magnet currents were introduced only later, when the SPS had to run as a storage ring for the SPS p–pbar collider. Van der Meer's accelerator knowledge and computer programming meant he developed very sophisticated applications and tools to control the antiproton source accelerators as well as the transfer of antiprotons to the SPS Collider for Nobel-winning discoveries. The AA and AC pbar source complex machines remained from 1987 to 1996 the most highly automated set of machines in CERN's repertoire of accelerators. Nobel prize Van der Meer invented the technique of stochastic cooling of particle beams. His technique was used to accumulate intense beams of antiprotons for head-on collision with counter-rotating proton beams at 540 GeV centre-of-mass energy or 270 GeV per beam in the Super Proton Synchrotron at CERN. Such collisions produced W and Z bosons which could be detected for the first time in 1983 by the UA1 experiment, led by Carlo Rubbia. The W and Z bosons had been theoretically predicted some years earlier, and their experimental discovery was considered a significant success for CERN. Van der Meer and Rubbia shared the 1984 Nobel Prize for their decisive contributions to the project. Van der Meer and Ernest Lawrence are the only two accelerator physicists who have won the Nobel prize. Apart from his Nobel Prize Van der Meer also became a member of the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1984. References External links including the Nobel Lecture, 8 December 1984 Stochastic Cooling and the Accumulation of Antiprotons CERN pays tribute to Simon van der Meer 1925 births 2011 deaths Accelerator physicists People associated with CERN Delft University of Technology alumni 20th-century Dutch inventors Dutch Nobel laureates 20th-century Dutch physicists