At this time, my work on the SPS power supplies had just come to an end; I joined a study group on the pp project and an experimental team studying cooling in a small ring (ICE).

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.