New Delhi: James H. Simons, a well-loved figure known for his pioneering work in math, his big impact in finance, and his deep commitment to giving, passed away on May 10 at 86. Simons, often called the “quant king,” started Renaissance Technologies, a hedge fund that shook up how people invest by using fancy math and computers to make decisions. His legacy in both math and money is huge and will be remembered for a long time.
Born in Massachusetts in 1938, Simons was into math from the start. He got his bachelor’s degree from MIT in 1958 and his doctorate from the University of California, Berkeley in 1961. He worked as a codebreaker for the US during the Cold War and later became a big deal in teaching math at Stony Brook University.
In 1978, Simons moved from teaching to finance, starting a hedge fund that later became Renaissance Technologies. He led the company as it became famous for using math to make smart investments, especially with its Medallion Fund. Even though there were some tough times, like a big argument with the US government in 2021, Renaissance Technologies kept doing well, managing a lot of money and setting the bar for how others invest using math.
Simons was also big on giving back, starting the Simons Foundation with his wife Marilyn in 1994. The foundation supports research in different sciences and has helped out a lot of smart people, some of whom won Nobel Prizes later on. Simons summed up his life at a 2022 event by saying, “I did a lot of math, I made a lot of money, and I gave almost all of it away.”
