James Harris Simons, or Jim Simons, is known as the “Quant King” and one of the greatest investors of all time, after having started one of the most successful quant funds in the world, Renaissance Technologies (“RT”). Simons founded RT in 1982 when he was 44 years old. Even though the fund only won 51% of trades, the fund made 66% annually for 30 years. It’s a story of genius, but also of how hard it is to beat markets.
Jim Simons was born in 1938 in Brookline, Mass., and discovered his love for mathematics at an early age. At the age of 14, Simons worked at a garden supply store as a floor sweeper after being demoted from a stock boy position due to his lack of memory of inventory location. However, Simons was astute and had the ambitious plan of becoming a mathematician at the MIT.
In 1955, Simons was accepted into MIT and majored in mathematics. Upon graduating, Simons studied at the University of California at Berkeley for his doctorate in mathematics. His thesis focused on providing supporting proof of Berger’s classification of the holonomy groups of Riemannian manifolds, and after just one year, he received his doctorate at the age of 23 in 1961.
Later, Simons worked on important mathematical theories, including the Chern-Simons form, which later played a role in topological quantum field theory. He had an early and successful career in mathematics, winning multiple awards, and later was inducted into the U.S. National Academy of Sciences.
