James Harris Simons
James Harris Simons is rightfully the smartest billionaire, since he earned his billions with the help of science.
An outstanding mathematician and scientific philanthropist proved to the whole world that mathematical models make it possible to predict any financial markets.
And the investment company Renaissance Technologies, founded by him, has been showing high returns for more than 20 years, outpacing outstanding market tycoons George Soros and Warren Buffet.
James Harris Simons is truly a brilliant person who was able to go down in history not only thanks to his place of honor on the Forbes list, but thanks to the active development of mathematics, physics, and medicine.
James Harris Simons is at the same time the most secretive head of a hedge fund, but still he could not hide some facts from his biography from the gaze of journalists.
James was lucky to be born into a wealthy family, because his father Matthew Simons was the owner of a huge shoe factory, the income from which completely provided a comfortable life. Since the father had a good income, the mother looked after the children and was a housewife.
Education. Scientific career
James Harris Simons showed great interest in the exact sciences from childhood, so the choice of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1958 became quite natural. Having received a bachelor's degree in mathematics, he entered the University of California, Berkeley, where at the age of 24 he became a doctor of science. Just imagine, at such a young age and have already become a doctor of science.
In the period from 1961 to 1964, James Harris began active teaching, namely teaching mathematics at two of the most prestigious universities - Harvard and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. At the end of 1964, James received a research position at the Institute for Defense Analyzes, where he continued his successful activities until 1968.
In 1968, James received an offer to head the mathematics department at Stony Brook University, which he could not refuse. During his work at the university, scientific work intensified, so it quickly rose in the rankings and became one of the ten best universities in the United States.
The year 1976 becomes a landmark year for James Harris as he received the Oswald Veblen Prize in Geometry for his work on multidimensional surfaces. Thanks to his work, James was able to prove Bernstein's theorem and also improved the regularity properties of Wendell Fleming's result on Plateau's problem. In fact, these achievements have already inscribed his name in the history of science forever.
Asset Manager
Despite the fact that scientific activity allowed him to reveal his full mental potential, James Harris clearly understood that he could not make a fortune from this. Therefore, in 1978, he left academia and founded his own investment firm, Renaissance Technologies. The investment company Renaissance Technologies began to attract scientific specialists from all over the world, and they were especially interested in mathematicians, physicists, statisticians and even astrologers.
The investment company itself collected the best personnel around the world, since the forecasts are based on a huge amount of work with large statistical information, which contains certain patterns, on the basis of which mathematical forecasting and investment models are developed. Just imagine, the company employs more than 60 world-class scientists.
James Harris Simons is one of the pioneers in creating mechanical trading strategies based on software. Average annual returns are almost always in the 30 percent range, and his spinoff fund, RIEF, has more than $100 billion under management.
Charity
James Harris is an active philanthropist, as he regularly participates in charity events. However, unlike other rich people, for whom charity is nothing more than PR, Harris invests money in science.
Thus, it was his family foundation that donated more than $130 million to study the cause of autism and the possibilities of its treatment, which became the largest investment in the world for the study of this disease.
He also created the Nick Simons Institute in Nepal, thanks to which healthcare in Nepal has risen to a new level. Unfortunately, James Harris Simons survived the death of two of his sons, in whose honor two large charitable foundations were created.
Today, Simons' net worth is estimated at more than $10.5 billion.