| 1 | Name: | Dr. James H. Simons | |
| Institution: | Euclidean LLC | ||
| Year Elected: | 2007 | ||
| Class: | 5. The Arts, Professions, and Leaders in Public & Private Affairs | ||
| Subdivision: | 503. Administrators, Bankers and Opinion Leaders from the Public or Private Sectors | ||
| Residency: | Resident | ||
| Living? : | Deceased | ||
| Birth Date: | 1938 | ||
| Death Date: | May 10, 2024 | ||
James Simons has been very successful at two different endeavors: research mathematics and investing. During his career as a mathematician, James Simons was a leading differential geometer. He recast the subject of area of minimizing surfaces. A consequence of this was the settling of two classical questions, the Bernstein Conjecture and the Plateau Problem. Jointly with S.S. Chern, he discovered certain measurements now called the Chern-Simons Invariants, which have found wide use, particularly in theoretical physics. In 1978, Simons turned his attention to investments. He founded Renaissance Technologies Corporation, a private investment firm dedicated to the use of mathematical methods, which is staffed by Ph.D. mathematicians and physicists. Renaissance is one of the most successful fund management firms in history. He also manages the Simons Foundation, a private charitable organization devoted to scientific research with over $200 million in assets. He was elected to life membership in the MIT Corporation in July of 2010, and to membership in the National Academy of Sciences in 2014. In 2013 he received the Carnegie Medal of Philanthropy. | |||