Wealthy hedge fund founder Jim Simons passes away at 86 years old.
Jim Simons, who established the hedge fund Renaissance Technologies, was one of the pioneers of quantitative investing, a market strategy centered on mathematical and statistical models for finding investment opportunities. As he aged, he transitioned into being a political supporter and philanthropist.
Simons' passion for numbers and math started at a young age, as mentioned on his foundation's website. He was born in Newton, Massachusetts, in 1938, and went on to acquire a math degree from MIT and a doctorate in math from the University of California, Berkeley.
During a 2015 interview for the Numberphile podcast, Simons expressed, "Mathematics was the only subject I liked."
Following a short period teaching at MIT and Harvard University, Simons took up a role at the Institute for Defense Analyses in Princeton, New Jersey, where he worked as a code breaker for the National Security Agency. However, he was dismissed in 1968 due to his antagonism towards the Vietnam War.
Subsequently, Simons accepted a position at Stony Brook University as the chairperson of the institution's mathematics department.
Later in life, Simons left the academic sphere in the late 70s and, in 1982, founded Renaissance Technologies.
"I was examining price patterns and realized there was something we could study here and that we could predict prices mathematically and statistically," Simons shared on the Numberphile podcast. "Bit by bit, we developed models, and they improved constantly. Eventually, the models replaced the fundamental elements."
Simons' computer models substantially expanded his hedge fund into a multibillion-dollar enterprise.
In his later years, Simons dedicated himself to philanthropy and became a significant Democrat political donor. The Simons Foundation supports autism research and furnishes grants for science and math education and research.
Last year, Simons' foundation granted $500 million to Stony Brook's endowment, the largest undesignated donation to an American university ever recorded, in accordance with the Simons Foundation.
"I joined Stony Brook University in 1968 as chair of their Department of Mathematics," Simons shared at the time. "I knew then it was a top intellectual center with a serious commitment to research and innovation. However, Stony Brook also offered me the chance to lead – and it has been extremely gratifying to witness the university expand and thrive even more."
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Source: edition.cnn.com
