Billionaire quant investing pioneer and philanthropist James Simons dies at 86
Billionaire investor James Simons, the mathematician and Cold War code-breaker who founded one of the world's most prominent and profitable hedge funds, Renaissance Technologies, has died at 86, his foundation said on Friday.
The Simons Foundation did not give a cause of death.
Sixty years ago Simons — who preferred to be known as Jim — shifted course from teaching mathematics and working in U.S. intelligence to investing. His pioneering use of computer signals for trading decisions earned him the nickname "Quant King."
With a net worth estimated at $31 billion by Forbes, Simons also became a prominent philanthropist, giving away billions of dollars during his lifetime to support medical and science research, teaching and Democratic candidates.
«Churchill said 'great and good are seldom the same man.' Jim Simons was the exception that proves Churchill's rule,» said Clifford Asness, managing and founding principal of AQR Capital Management, referring to British war-time Prime Minister Winston Churchill.
As a mathematician, Simons was used to working large sets of data and comfortable finding patterns to guide buying and selling.
He founded Renaissance in 1978 in East Setauket, New York, 70 miles east of Wall Street. He quickly forged a new way to invest, laying the foundations of quantitative trading that has been embraced by dozens of firms in recent years.
«We hire physicists, mathematicians, astronomers and computer scientists and they typically know nothing about finance,» Simons, told a 2007 New York
