JAMES SIMONS

SIMONS--James H. The Rockefeller University is deeply saddened by the death of Life Trustee Dr. James H. "Jim" Simons, a cherished member of our campus community and one of the great intellects of our time. Jim was a uniquely talented individual, who, with his beloved and gifted spouse, Marilyn, reached the apogee of what it means to be a great philanthropist. A renowned mathematician and financial pioneer, Jim founded Renaissance Technologies, a now legendary quantitative investment firm, and served as its CEO for more than 30 years. Earlier in his career, he was chairman of the Mathematics Department at Stony Brook University, was a cryptanalyst at the Institute of Defense Analyses at Princeton, and taught mathematics at Harvard University and his alma mater, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. For his pioneering work in mathematics, Jim received the 1976 Oswald Veblen Prize in Geometry from the American Mathematical Society and was elected to the National Academy of Sciences in 2014. Jim joined the Rockefeller University Board of Trustees in 2000 and was elected to Life Trusteeship, the Board's highest honor, in 2013. Throughout his tenure, Jim helped to recruit world class faculty; strengthened our programs at the interface of physics, mathematics, and biology; and sustained the outstanding clinical research program at the Rockefeller University Hospital. It is no exaggeration to say that Rockefeller would not be the vibrant and scientifically robust institution it is today without him. The university recognized Jim and Marilyn Simons for their transformative leadership with honorary degrees in 2013. A visionary philanthropist with an unwavering belief in the importance of basic science, Jim served as Chairman of the Simons Foundation, an organization dedicated to advancing the frontiers of research in mathematics and basic science. Through the Simons Foundation, in 2016 Jim launched the Flatiron Institute, a network of five centers for computational science working to advance scientific research. He also dedicated his time to many prestigious institutions, including Stony Brook University, the Brookhaven National Laboratory, the Institute for Advanced Study, and the New York Genome Center. He possessed a deep integrity and great compassion for others. He was highly respected by his many friends at Rockefeller and will be very much missed. We send our deepest sympathies to Marilyn, his children, Elizabeth, Nathaniel, and Audrey, and the entire Simons family. Board Chair William Ford, Chair Emeritus Russell Carson, President Richard Lifton, Vice President for Medical Affairs Barry Coller, Vice President for Academic Affairs Cori Bargmann, James and Marilyn Simons Professor Nathaniel Heintz