Simon van der Meer was one of four children. He was raised in The Hague, Netherlands. His father was a school teacher, and his mother came from a family of teachers. He went to school at the city's gymnasium. He graduated in 1943 when the German army had control of the Netherlands. In 1945, van der Meer went to the Delft University of Technology. He earned an engineer's degree there in 1952. He joined CERN in 1956, and he stayed there until he retired in 1990.