Jim Simons

American mathematician and hedge fund manager

James Harris Simons (/ˈsmənz/; born April 25, 1938) is an American mathematician, billionaire hedge fund manager, and philanthropist.[1] He is known as a quantitative analyst. In 1982, Simons founded Renaissance Technologies. He is seen as the greatest investor on Wall Street.[2]

As reported by Forbes, his net worth as of October 2019 is estimated to be $21.6 billion, making Simons the 21st-richest man in the United States.[3]

Simons was born in Newton, Massachusetts. He studied at University of California, Berkeley and at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Early life and education change

James Harris Simons was born on April 25, 1938[4][5] to an American Jewish family,[6] the only child of Marcia (née Kantor)[7] and Matthew Simons, and raised in Brookline, Massachusetts.[8]

He received a bachelor's degree in mathematics from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1958[9] and a PhD in mathematics from the University of California, Berkeley under supervision of Bertram Kostant in 1961 at the age of 23.[9] After graduating from MIT, Simons traveled from Boston to Bogotá, Colombia on a motor scooter.[10]

Honors and awards change

In 2008, he was inducted into Institutional Investors Alpha's Hedge Fund Manager Hall of Fame along with Alfred Jones, Bruce Kovner, David Swensen, George Soros, Jack Nash, Julian Robertson, Kenneth Griffin, Leon Levy, Louis Bacon, Michael Steinhardt, Paul Tudor Jones, Seth Klarman and Steven A. Cohen.[11]

He was named by the Financial Times in 2006 as "the world's smartest billionaire".[12] He was elected to the American Philosophical Society in 2007.[13] In 2011, he was included in the 50 Most Influential ranking of Bloomberg Markets Magazine.[14]

A book about Simons and his investing methods, The Man Who Solved the Market: How Jim Simons Launched the Quant Revolution by Gregory Zuckerman was released November 5, 2019.[15] In 2018, Trinity College Dublin awarded him with an honorary doctorate.[16]


References change

  1. "Jim Simons". Forbes.
  2. Zuckerman, Gregory (2019-11-02). "The Making of the World's Greatest Investor". Wall Street Journal. ISSN 0099-9660. Retrieved 2019-11-03.
  3. "Jim Simons". Forbes.
  4. "Bloomberg Billionaires Index – Jim Simons". Bloomberg.com. Archived from the original on February 26, 2018. Retrieved February 25, 2018 – via www.bloomberg.com.
  5. "RENAISSANCE INSTITUTIONAL MANAGEMENT (UK) LIMITED". Companies House. Archived from the original on October 27, 2020. Retrieved 26 November 2017.
  6. "The Jewish Billionaires of Forbes". jspace.com. March 14, 2012. Archived from the original on March 28, 2012. Retrieved September 7, 2013.
  7. Boston Globe: "Marcia (Kantor) Simons Obituary" Archived August 13, 2014, at the Wayback Machine retrieved March 31, 2013.
  8. Bloomberg: "Simons at Renaissance Cracks Code, Doubling Assets (Update1)" By Richard Teitelbaum Archived April 16, 2012, at the Wayback Machine November 27, 2007
  9. 9.0 9.1 "James Simons". Mathematics Genealogy Project. AMS. Archived from the original on July 24, 2014. Retrieved August 8, 2014.
  10. Schaffer, Amanda (18 October 2016). "The Polymath Philanthropist". MIT Technology Review. Retrieved 2021-11-22.
  11. "Cohen, Simons, 12 Others Enter Hedge Fund Hall". Institutional Investor. Institutional Investor LLC. 23 September 2008. Archived from the original on June 16, 2019. Retrieved 16 June 2019.
  12. "Alternative Rich List". FT.com. September 22, 2006. Archived from the original on April 23, 2008. Retrieved November 8, 2007.
  13. "APS Member History". search.amphilsoc.org. Retrieved 2021-05-17.
  14. "Bloomberg Markets Most Influential 50". Bloomberg.com. September 8, 2011. Archived from the original on June 11, 2016. Retrieved 2020-05-11.
  15. Wigglesworth, Robin (November 2019). "The Man Who Solved the Market: How Jim Simons Launched the Quant Revolution". Financial Times. Archived from the original on May 11, 2020. Retrieved 2020-05-11.
  16. "Registrar : Trinity College Dublin, the University of Dublin, Ireland". www.tcd.ie. Archived from the original on October 30, 2019. Retrieved 2020-01-06.

Other websites change