James Harris "Jim" Simons is an American mathematician, hedge fund manager, and philanthropist.
Considering his background as a code breaker and an expert in pattern recognition some
also consider him as one of the pioneers of financial signal processing.
Simons taught mathematics at Stony Brook University on Long Island in New York.
In 1982, Simons founded Renaissance Technologies, a private hedge fund investment company based
in New York with over $15 billion under management.
Simons retired at the end of 2009 as CEO of one of the world's most successful hedge fund
companies.
Simons' net worth is estimated to be $12.5 billion.
Simons lives with his wife Marilyn H. Simons in Manhattan and Long Island, and is the father
of five children; two of his children died young under tragic circumstances—a drowning
and an auto accident.
Simons shuns the limelight and rarely gives interviews, citing Benjamin the Donkey in
Animal Farm for explanation: "God gave me a tail to keep off the flies.
But I'd rather have had no tail and no flies."
On October 10, 2009, Simons announced he would retire on January 1, 2010 but remain at Renaissance
as nonexecutive chairman.
Early life and education James Harris Simons was born to a Jewish family,
the only child of Marcia and Matthew Simons, and raised in Brookline, Massachusetts.
His father owned a shoe factory.
He received a Bachelor of Science in mathematics from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology
in 1958and a Ph.D., also in mathematics, from the University of California, Berkeley, under
supervision of Bertram Kostant in 1961, at the age of 23.
Business career
For more than two decades, Simons' Renaissance Technologies' hedge funds, which trade in
markets around the world, have employed mathematical models to analyze and execute trades, many
automated.
Renaissance uses computer-based models to predict price changes in easily-traded financial
instruments.
These models are based on analyzing as much data as can be gathered, then looking for
non-random movements to make predictions.
Renaissance employs many specialists with non-financial backgrounds, including mathematicians,
physicists, signal processing experts and statisticians.
The firm's latest fund is the Renaissance Institutional Equities Fund.
RIEF has historically trailed the firm's better-known Medallion fund, a separate fund that only
contains the personal money of the firm's executives.
"It's startling to see such a highly successful mathematician achieve success in another field,"
says Edward Witten, professor of physics at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton,
NJ, and considered by many of his peers to be the most accomplished theoretical physicist
alive....
In 2006, Simons was named Financial Engineer of the Year by the International Association
of Financial Engineers.
In 2007, he was estimated to have personally earned $2.8 billion, $1.7 billion in 2006,
$1.5 billion in 2005, and $670 million in 2004.
Academic and scientific career In 1964, Simons worked with the National Security
Agency to break codes.
Between 1964 and 1968, he was on the research staff of the Communications Research Division
of the Institute for Defense Analyses and taught mathematics at the Massachusetts Institute
of Technology and Harvard University, ultimately joining the faculty at Stony Brook University.
In 1968, he was appointed chairman of the math department at Stony Brook University.
Simons was asked by IBM in 1973 to attack the block cipher Lucifer, an early but direct
precursor to the Data Encryption Standard.
Simons founded Math for America.
He funds a variety of research projects.
Philanthropy Simons and his second wife, Marilyn Hawrys
Simons, co-founded the Simons Foundation, a charitable organization that supports projects
related to education and health, in addition to scientific research.
In memory of his son Paul, whom he had with his first wife, Barbara Simons, he established
Avalon Park, a 130-acre nature preserve in Stony Brook.
In 1996, 34-year-old Paul was killed by a car while riding a bicycle near the Simons
home.
Another son, Nick Simons, drowned at age 24 while on a trip to Bali in Indonesia in 2003.
Nick had worked in Nepal and the Simons have become large donors to Nepalese healthcare
through the Nick Simons Institute.
Also in 2006, Simons donated $25 million to Stony Brook University through the Stony Brook
Foundation.
The gift is intended to benefit the Mathematics and Physics departments at the university.
On February 27, 2008, then Gov. Eliot Spitzer announced a $60 million donation by the Simons
Foundation to found the Simons Center for Geometry and Physics at Stony Brook, the largest
gift to a public university in New York state history.
In December 2008 it was reported that the Stony Brook University Foundation, of which
Simons is chair emeritus, lost $5.4 million in Bernard Madoff’s Ponzi scheme.
Political contributions Simons is a major contributor to Democratic
Party political action committees.
Boardroom appointments Simons serves as trustee of Brookhaven National
Laboratory, the Institute for Advanced Study, Rockefeller University, the Mathematical Sciences
Research Institute in Berkeley and a trustee of Stony Brook University.
He is also a member of the Board of the MIT Corporation.
Controversies In May 2009, Simons was questioned by investors
regarding the pattern of losses in a Renaissance fund owned by outside investors while the
investments held by Simons and fund associates enjoyed enormous gains in value.
On July 22, 2014, Simons was subject to bipartisian condemnation by the U.S. Senate Permanent
Subcommittee on Investigations for the use of complex barrier options to shield day to
day trading as long-term capital gains.
“Renaissance Technologies was able to avoid paying more than $6 billion in taxes by disguising
its day-to-day stock trades as long term investments,” said Sen. John McCain, the committee’s ranking
Republican, in his opening statement.
“Two banks and a handful of hedge funds developed a complex financial structure to
engage in highly profitable trades while claiming an unjustified lower tax rate and avoiding
limits on trading with borrowed money,” said Sen. Carl Levin in his prepared remarks.
Simons had dealings with Madoff.
Wealth Simons earned an estimated $2.5 billion in
2008, and with an estimated net worth of $12.5 billion, he is ranked by Forbes as the 88th-richest
person in the world and the 27th-richest person in America.
He was named by the Financial Times in 2006 as "the world's smartest billionaire".
In 2011, he was included in the 50 Most Influential ranking of Bloomberg Markets Magazine.
Simons owns a motor yacht, named 'Archimedes'.
She was built at the Dutch yacht builder Royal Van Lent and delivered to Simons in 2008.
See also Chern–Simons theory
Chern–Simons form The Quants: How a New Breed of Math Whizzes
Conquered Wall Street and Nearly Destroyed It
Speech at MIT Video of Carnegie Medal ceremony on YouTube
Notes
External links The Code Breaker – January 2008 Bloomberg
Markets article on Simons and Renaissance The Simons Foundation
Titan's Millions Stir Up Research Into Autism James Harris Simons at the Mathematics Genealogy
Project Putting His Money Where His Math Is – September
2006 article in Seed Magazine.
Nick Simons Institute Jim Simons Latest Portfolio
James Simons on mathematics, common sense and good luck: my life and careers, MIT
Jim Simons Speaks: Just No to Google and Goldman Sachs