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Jim Simons has died

simonsfoundation.org

221–230 of 338 posts

Re: Jim Simons has died

#221
post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hopefully the Simons empire has enough people who will keep executing his vision and stave off bureaucratic rot. Making money is one thing, but circulating so much of it back through math and science is a great legacy.

The thing is that he genuinely loved math. I don't think there's really anyone in his orbit who loves math as much. His family is his family and his colleagues love money. We'll see in the coming months and years whether he was able to create a structure that continues his legacy but usually the answer to that question is no.

I think it's doable. Institutions under top leadership can thrive long after its founders die. This is true of almost every Fortune 500 company. I am sure there is enough redundancy to continue the foundation's goal. Carnegie foundation or Ford foundation, or Apple computers after jobs died .

Re: Jim Simons has died

#222

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Bill gates did math 55. legit smart guy

You don't need to be a smart guy to take math 55, nor is 'being a smart guy' what I'm even talking about.

maybe you should have written what you meant to talk about

Re: Jim Simons has died

#224
post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hopefully the Simons empire has enough people who will keep executing his vision and stave off bureaucratic rot. Making money is one thing, but circulating so much of it back through math and science is a great legacy.

I wonder if he left any of the rest of his money to the foundation, or if it all stays with his family.

https://givingpledge.org/pledger?pledgerId=288

giving it away

Re: Jim Simons has died

#225
post #78

Will be interesting to see how this affects math research. He has pumped unthinkable amounts of money into the field. The only first-class flights I've taken in my life were to get to Simons-funded conferences at super fancy hotels. (I found these conferences a bit ridiculous, but the luxury treatment did ensure that they could get together a lot of the biggest names in the field in one place.) Besides the conference…

His wife also helps run the foundation doesn’t she? Looks like she’s ~73 so hopefully has a few years left.

73 is less than a decade into retirement age; hopefully she has much more than a few! Looks like 14.5 years life expectancy

Re: Jim Simons has died

#226
post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

His whole RenTech story was fascinating. Effectively an outsider in finance who gathered a bunch of other outsiders (aka big mathematicians), and decided to start a hedge fund that takes zero interest in the actual companies and trades solely on math. Which makes sense, since none of the main people involved in its creation had any corporate or finance experience, but tons of math experience and knowledge. This is ov…

Does the book cover anything about how the fund actually works? It's understandable that they'd want to keep a tight lid on it, but I'm so curious

no. One can infer it involves analyzing data, but for obvious reasons the ingredients for possibly reconstructing it are omitted.

Re: Jim Simons has died

#227

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You don't need to be a smart guy to take math 55, nor is 'being a smart guy' what I'm even talking about.

maybe you should have written what you meant to talk about

Friend, there's a world of difference between being a smart guy who completed a hard math class and being one of the world's best researchers in differential geometry.

Re: Jim Simons has died

#228
post #8

I highly recommend the book "The Man Who Solved the Market" by Gregory Zuckerman which explains how Simons build his infamous company. https://www.amazon.com/Man-Who-Solved-Market-Revolution/dp/0...

infamous implies bad.

Well it’s an algo trading company.

Re: Jim Simons has died

#229

Earlier quoted context omitted.

maybe you should have written what you meant to talk about

Friend, there's a world of difference between being a smart guy who completed a hard math class and being one of the world's best researchers in differential geometry.

Bill Gates had the aptitude to be a leading researcher at probably anything if he set out to do it. He was already doing coding whilst working on math courses, so his attention was divided. Simons focused 100% on math until doing trading.

Re: Jim Simons has died

#230

Earlier quoted context omitted.

maybe you should have written what you meant to talk about

Friend, there's a world of difference between being a smart guy who completed a hard math class and being one of the world's best researchers in differential geometry.

> Bill Gates had the aptitude to be a leading researcher at probably anything if he set out to do it. He was already doing coding whilst working on math courses, so his attention was divided. Simons focused 100% on math until doing trading.

Ok, I guess you're right. A smart guy who completes a hard math class and is even also doing coding can probably do anything he wants.

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