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.

Van der Meer and Ernest Lawrence are the only two accelerator physicists who have won the Nobel prize. 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.