Simon Van Der Meer Fest, 1

Friday 23 November saw two memorable events at CERN. In the morning there was a private visit by Czechoslovakia's President Vaclav HAVEL to the laboratory where he met Director General Carlo RUBBIA and went down into the LEP tunnel to see the machine and visit the DELPHI experiment, where Czechoslovak physicists are particularly involved. Informal discussions on his country's intent to become a CERN Member State had taken place the previous day. The afternoon saw a 'Simon VAN DER MEER Fest' marking the formal retirement of the gifted machine physicist who has made so many so many valuable contributions, notably the invention of stochastic cooling and its subsequent development for CERN's antiproton profect. For their decisive contributions to the 1983 discovery of the W and Z particles, he and Carlo RUBBIA shared the 1984 Nobel Physics Prize. Chairman : U. AMALDI