James Harris " Jim " Simons (born April 25, 1938) is an American mathematician, billionaire hedge fund manager , and philanthropic. He was known as a quantitative investor and in 1982 founded Renaissance Technologies, a private hedge fund based in New York City. Although Simons retired from the fund in 2009, he remains a non-executive chairman and adviser.
He is also known for his study of pattern recognition. He developed (with Shiing-Shen Chern) forms of Chern-Simons, and contributed to the development of string theory by providing a theoretical framework for combining geometry and topology with quantum field theory. From 1968 to 1978, Simons was a professor of mathematics and chair of the mathematics department at Stony Brook University.
As reported by Forbes, his net worth in February 2018 is estimated at $ 20 billion, while in the previous year, $ 15.5 billion.
In 2016, the 6618 asteroid Jimsimons, invented by Clyde Tombaugh in 1936, was named after Simons by the International Astronomical Union to honor his contributions to mathematics and philanthropy.
Video James Harris Simons
Early life and education
James Harris Simons was born on April 25, 1938 from an American Jewish family, the only son of Marcia (nÃÆ' Â © e Office) and Matthew Simons, and grew up in Brookline, Massachusetts. Her father owns a shoe factory.
He received a bachelor's degree in mathematics from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1958 and a PhD, also in mathematics, from the University of California, Berkeley, under the supervision of Bertram Kostant in 1961, at the age of 23.
Maps James Harris Simons
Investment career
Renaissance Technologies
For more than two decades, Simons' hedge fund Renaissance Technologies, which trades markets worldwide, has used mathematical models to analyze and execute trades, many of which are automated. The Renaissance uses computer-based models to predict price changes in financial instruments. These models are based on analyzing as much data as possible, then looking for non-random movements to make predictions.
Renaissance employs specialists with non-financial backgrounds, including mathematicians, physicists, signaling experts, and statisticians. The company's latest fund is the Renaissance Institutional Equities Fund (RIEF). RIEF has historically trailed the more well-known Medal Fund of a company, a separate fund containing only the personal money of company executives.
"It's surprising to see a very successful mathematician achieve success in other fields," said Edward Witten, professor of physics at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, NJ, and is considered by many of his colleagues as the most successful theoretical physicists to live....
In 2006, Simons was appointed Financial Engineer of the Year by the International Association of Financial Engineers. In 2007, he was estimated to personally earn $ 2.8 billion, $ 1.7 billion in 2006, $ 1.5 billion in 2005, (the largest compensation among hedge fund managers that year) and $ 670 million in the year 2004.
Academic and scientific career
Simons's mathematical work primarily focuses on geometry and topology manifolds. His 1962 Berkeley PhD thesis, written under the direction of Bertram Kostant, provides new and more conceptual evidence of Berger's classification of the Riemannian holifist groups manifold, now the foundation of modern geometry. He then began working with Shing-Shen Chern on characteristic class theory, eventually finding the secondary characteristic class Chern-Simons of the 3-manifold, which was strongly related to Yang-Mills function on 4-manifolds, and has had profound effects on modern physics. This and other contributions to geometry and topology led to Simons being the 1976 recipient of the Oswald Veblen AMS Prize in Geometry. In 2014, he was elected at the United States National Academy of Sciences.
In 1964, Simons worked with the National Security Agency to decode. Between 1964 and 1968, he became a research staff of the Communications Research Division of the Institute for Defense Analyzes (IDA) and taught mathematics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Harvard University, eventually joining the faculty at Stony Brook University. In 1968, he was appointed chair of the mathematics department at Stony Brook University.
Simons was asked by IBM in 1973 to attack the Lucifer cipher block, the first predecessor but directly to the Data Encryption Standard (DES).
Simons founded Math for America, a nonprofit organization, in January 2004 with a mission to improve mathematics education in US public schools by recruiting more qualified teachers. He funded various research projects.
Personal life
Simons avoids the limelight and rarely gives interviews, quoting Benjamin the Donkey at Animal Farm for explanation: "God gave me a tail to drive flies, but I prefer not to have a tail and no flies." On October 10 2009, Simons announces he will retire on January 1, 2010 but remains in the Renaissance as a nonexistent chairman.
In 1996, his son, Paul, 34, rode a bicycle, when he was killed by a car on Long Island. In 2003, his son, Nicholas, aged 24, sank on his way to Bali, Indonesia. She worked in Nepal for 9 months. His son Nat Simons is an investor and philanthropist.
Political and economic views
Simons is a major contributor to the Democratic Party's political action committee. According to the Responsive Political Center, Simons is currently the # 5 donor rank for a federal candidate in the 2016 election cycle, coming behind co-CEO Robert Mercer, who is ranked # 1 and generally donates to Republicans. Simons has donated $ 7 million to Hillary Clinton's Priorities USA Action, $ 2.6 million for Parliament and Senate Majority PACs, and $ 500,000 to EMILY's List. He also donated $ 25,000 to PAC super Republican Senator Lindsey Graham. Since 2006, Simons has contributed about $ 30.6 million to federal campaigns. Since 1990, Renaissance Technologies has donated $ 59,081,152 for federal campaigns and since 2001, has spent $ 3.730 million to lobby.
Controversy
According to Wall Street Journal in May 2009, Simons was questioned by investors on the dramatic performance gap from Renaissance Technologies portfolio. The Medallion Fund, which has been available exclusively to current and previous employees and their families, jumped 80% in 2008 despite the hefty cost; The Renaissance Equity Institutional Fund (RIEF), owned by outsiders, lost money in 2008 and 2009; RIEF decreased by 16% in 2008.
On July 22, 2014, Simons was subjected to bipartisan criticism by the US Senate Subcommittee on Permanent Investigations for the use of a complex barrier option to protect day-to-day trade (usually subject to higher regular income tax rates) as a long-term capital gain. "Renaissance Technologies is able to avoid paying more than $ 6 billion in taxes by disguising its day-to-day stock trading as a long-term investment," said Sen. John McCain (R., Ariz.), Republican committee rating, in his opening statement. "Two banks and a handful of hedge funds are developing complex financial structures to engage in highly profitable trades while claiming lower unfair tax rates and avoid limits on trading with borrowed money," said Sen. Carl Levin (D., Mich.). prepared remarks.
An article published in the New York Times in 2015 said that Simons was involved in one of the biggest tax battles this year, with Renaissance Technologies being "being checked by the IRS for a gap that saved their funds of around $ 6.8 billion taxes for about a decade. "
Wealth and philanthropy
He was named by the Financial Times in 2006 as "the world's smartest billionaire". According to Forbes magazine Simons has a net worth of $ 18 billion USD in February 2017. This makes it # 24 on the Forbes 400 richest people list.
In 2011, it was included in the 50 Most Influential rankings of Bloomberg Markets Magazine . Simons owns a motor boat, named Archimedes . Built on the Dutch yacht builder Royal Van Lent and shipped to Simons in 2008.
Simons and his second wife, Marilyn Hawrys Simons, founded the Simons Foundation in 1994, 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 founded Avalon Park, a 100-hectare (0.53 km) nature reserve at Stony Brook. In 1996, Paul, 34, was killed by a car driver while riding a bicycle near the Simon family's home. Another son, Nick Simons, drowned at the age of 24 years while traveling to Bali in Indonesia in 2003. Nick once worked in Nepal. The Simons family has been a major donor to Nepali health care through the Nick Simons Institute.
The Simons Foundation established the Simons Research Autism Research Initiative (SFARI) in 2003 as a scientific initiative in the Simons Foundation series of programs. The mission of SFARI is to enhance the understanding, diagnosis, and treatment of autism spectrum disorders.
In 2004, Simons founded Math for America with an initial $ 25 million promise from the Simons Foundation, a promise he later dwindled in 2006.
Also in 2006, Simons donated $ 25 million to Stony Brook University through the Stony Brook Foundation, the largest donation ever made to the State University of New York school at the time.
On February 27, 2008, then Governor Eliot Spitzer announced a $ 60 million donation by the Simons Foundation to establish the Simons Center for Geometry and Physics at Stony Brook, the greatest prize to a state university in the history of New York state.
In December 2008, it was reported that the Stony Brook University Foundation, where Simons was chairman emeritus, lost $ 5.4 million in Ponzi Bernard Madoff scheme.
Through the foundation, he and Marilyn also funded the renovation of the math department's housing building at MIT, which in 2016 is named according to two of them.
Through the foundation, Simons has become a major contributor of the University of California, Berkeley. On July 1, 2012, the Simons Foundation awarded a $ 60 million grant to Berkeley to establish the Simons Institute for Computational Theory, the world's leading institution for collaborative research in theoretical computer science. The Foundation has also made another great prize for Berkeley, especially for the Mathematical Science Research Institute.
The Simons Foundation founded the Flatiron Institute in 2016, to accommodate 4 groups of computational scientists (each with 60 or more PhD level researchers). The institute consists of three core or departments: CCB (computational biology center), CCA (Center for Computational Astrophysics), CCQ (Center for Quantum Computing Mechanics). The fourth core, which has not been assembled, will focus on other branches of applied computing science. This new institution is located in Manhattan and is a major investment in basic computing science.
Inheritance and rewards
Source of the article : Wikipedia
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