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The Billionaire Mathematician

Posted by Soulskill on from the not-enough-room-in-the-margin-for-all-these-benjamins dept.

An anonymous reader writes Dr. James Simons received his doctorate at the age of 23. He was breaking codes for the NSA at 26, and was put in charge of Stony Brook University's math department at 30. He received the Veblen Prize in Geometry in 1976. Today, he's a multi-billionaire, using his fortune to set up educational foundations for math and science. "His passion, however, is basic research — the risky, freewheeling type. He recently financed new telescopes in the Chilean Andes that will look for faint ripples of light from the Big Bang, the theorized birth of the universe. The afternoon of the interview, he planned to speak to Stanford physicists eager to detect the axion, a ghostly particle thought to permeate the cosmos but long stuck in theoretical limbo. Their endeavor 'could be very exciting,' he said, his mood palpable, like that of a kid in a candy store." Dr. Simons is quick to say this his persistence, more than his intelligence, is key to his success: "I wasn't the fastest guy in the world. I wouldn't have done well in an Olympiad or a math contest. But I like to ponder. And pondering things, just sort of thinking about it and thinking about it, turns out to be a pretty good approach."

5 of 96 comments (clear)

  1. National Museum of Mathematics by cold+fjord · · Score: 5, Interesting

    FTA

    Nearby, on Madison Square Park, is the National Museum of Mathematics, or MoMath, an educational center he helped finance. It opened in 2012 and has had a quarter million visitors.

    Amazing, 250k visitors to a math museum? Who knew?

    Simons Foundation - MoMath

    --
    much of left-wing thought is a kind of playing with fire by people who don't even know that fire is hot - George Orwell
  2. grigori perelman and this guy walk into a bar by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Interesting

    james says "Hi Grigori, i have a billion dollars"

    grigori says. "i am not interested in money"

    james says "I graduated top honors, went to many three letter acronyms, and started a mega-company"

    grigori says "i am not interested in fame"

    james says "i am kind of a big deal. i have been featured in books and now on slashdot"

    grigori says "i wouldnt want to be like an animal in a zoo, on display"

    james says "i have given millions to charities, all kinds of charities, to encourage STEM"..

    grigori says "You are disturbing me. I am picking mushrooms,"

  3. Glad to see someone say that by EuclideanSilence · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Dr. Simons is quick to say this his persistence, more than his intelligence, is key to his success

    So very true. So often those with natural talent give up when they first encounter difficulty, where the slow learners just keep going.

    1. Re:Glad to see someone say that by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

      But then you have to ask: how many people like him failed to achieve anything they wanted because they remained persistent at the wrong thing?

  4. Maybe Dr Simons could buy rights to math texts by Tesseractic · · Score: 5, Interesting

    And release them under an open source license. Perhaps also organise a group of people to continue developing the content. I have in mind Mary L. Boas' book Mathematical Methods in the Physical Sciences. Mary L. Boas died a few years ago and her book is in its third edition. I have no idea what the publishers plan to do with it, but surely those who own the rights to it would be persuadable by the appropriate application of money.