Simon van der Meer was a Dutch physicist who made revolutionary contributions to the field of particle physics. He was responsible for the discovery of two of the fundamental building blocks of matter, W and Z bosons for which he received the Nobel Prize in Physics. Hailing from a family of teachers, van der Meer was raised in an intellectually stimulating environment where the emphasis was on providing good education to the children. Though he was well-educated, he considered it restrictive and regretted not having a more intensive training in physics. He later attributed his “amateur” learning to allow him to see complicated things in a simple and clear manner. He completed his degree in physical engineering from the Delft University of Technology and worked for Philips Research for a few years. He eventually became a physicist at CERN and worked on many studies and experiments, particularly the stochastic cooling technique, that is used in various machines even today. Another one of his noteworthy contributions to CERN was his work on the regulation and control of power supplies for the Intersecting Storage Rings (ISR). Despite all his successes and the international acclaim that followed, van der Meer was known to be a humble and introspective person completely devoted to his wife and family.