James Harris “Jim” Simons (born in 1938) is an American mathematician, academic, trader, and philanthropist.
In 1982, Simons started Renaissance Technologies, a private investment firm located in New York with over $15 billion under management; Simons remains at the helm, as CEO, of what is currently one of the world’s most successful hedge funds. Simons is estimated to have a net worth about $8.5 billion.
- James Harris Simons
- James Harris Simons: Renaissance Technologies
- James Harris Simons: More Info
Simons lives with his wife in Manhattan and Long Island, and is the father of three children.
Simons shuns the limelight and almost never gives interviews.
On October 10, 2009, Simons declared that he would retire on January 1, 2010 but remain at Renaissance in the capacity of a nonexecutive chairman.
Early life and career
Jim Simons’ father was a shoe factory owner in Massachusetts. Simons received his B.S. degree in mathematics from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1958. In 1961, at the age of 23, Simon received his Ph.D. degree in mathematics from the University of California, Berkeley. From 1964 to 1968 he worked on the research staff of the Communications Research Division of the Institute for Defense Analyses (IDA). Simons also taught mathematics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Harvard University. In 1968, he was appointed chairman of the at Stony Brook University math department.
In 1976, James Harris Simons was the winner of the American Mathematical Society’s Oswald Veblen Prize in Geometry.
Simons’ most influential research concerned the discovery and application of certain geometric measurements, and it resulted in the Chern-Simons form (sometimes known as Chern-Simons invariants, or Chern-Simons theory). In 1974, his theory was published in Characteristic Forms and Geometric Invariants, authored together with the differential geometer Shiing-Shen Chern. The theory is used in theoretical physics, especially string theory.
In 1978, he abandoned academia to run an investment fund trading in commodities and financial instruments on a discretionary basis.