Billionaire James Simons’s Giving Reflects His Enthusiasms

A New York Times profile details the unusual career and expansive, science-based giving of mathematician, financier, and philanthropist James H. Simons.

Mr. Simons, a former National Security Agency code-breaker and onetime head of the mathematics department at Long Island’s Stony Brook University, amassed an estimated $12.5-billion fortune as the founder of hedge fund Renaissance Technologies, which pioneered the use of quantitative analysis in investing.

In 1994, he and his wife, economist Marilyn Simons, launched the Simons Foundation, which has pumped hundreds of millions of dollars into scholarships and research in fields such as math, computing, biology, and physics.

Among the first Giving Pledge signers, the couple is also involved in Math for America, which promotes math teaching in public schools, and the National Museum of Mathematics in New York. “He’s very ambitious,” Princeton physicist Edward Witten said of Mr. Simons. “He can have a big impact.”