James H.
Simons, Ph.D.

James H. Simons, Ph.D., was the founder of Renaissance Technologies and a member of the board. Prior to his financial career, Dr. Simons served as chairman of the mathematics department at the State University of New York at Stony Brook, taught mathematics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Harvard University, and was a cryptanalyst at the Institute for Defense Analyses in Princeton, New Jersey. Dr. Simons’ scientific work was in geometry and topology; his most influential work involved the discovery and application of certain measurements, now called Chern-Simons invariants, which have had wide use, particularly in theoretical physics. Dr. Simons held a B.S. from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and a Ph.D. from the University of California, Berkeley, and won the American Mathematical Society’s Veblen Prize for his work in geometry in 1975. He was a trustee of the Stony Brook Foundation, Rockefeller University, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Brookhaven National Laboratory, the Mathematical Sciences Research Institute, and the Institute for Advanced Study, and a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the American Philosophical Society.

For more about his legacy, visit Honoring Jim Simons (1938-2024).