{"id":7996,"date":"2024-05-11T07:35:58","date_gmt":"2024-05-11T12:35:58","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/scottaaronson.blog\/?p=7996"},"modified":"2024-05-12T05:34:23","modified_gmt":"2024-05-12T10:34:23","slug":"jim-simons-1938-2024","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/scottaaronson.blog\/?p=7996","title":{"rendered":"Jim Simons (1938-2024)"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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When I learned of Jim Simons’s passing, I was actually at<\/em> the Simons Foundation<\/a> headquarters in lower Manhattan, for the annual board meeting of the unparalleled Quanta Magazine<\/a>, which Simons founded and named. The meeting was interrupted to share the sad news, before it became public … and then it was continued, because that’s obviously what Simons would’ve wanted. An oil portrait of Simons in the conference room took on new meaning.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

See here<\/a> for the Simons Foundation’s announcement, or here<\/a> for the NYT’s obituary.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Although the Simons Foundation has had multiple significant influences on my life—funding my research, founding the Simons Institute for Theory of Computing<\/a> in Berkeley that I often visit (including two weeks ago), and much more—I\u2019ve exchanged all of a few sentences with Jim Simons himself. At a previous Simons Foundation meeting, I think he said he’d heard I’d moved from MIT to UT Austin, and asked whether I’d bought a cowboy hat yet. I said I did but I hadn’t yet worn it non-ironically, and he laughed at that. (My wife Dana knew him better, having spent a day at a brainstorming meeting for what became the Simons Institute, his trademark cigar smoke filling the room.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I am, of course, in awe of what Jim Simons achieved in all three phases of his career \u2014 firstly, in mathematical research, where he introduced the Chern-Simons<\/a> form and other pioneering contributions and led the math department at Stony Brook; secondly, in founding Renaissance<\/a> and making insane amounts of money (“disproving the Efficient Market Hypothesis<\/a>,” as some have claimed); and thirdly, in giving his money away to support basic research and the public understanding of it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I\u2019m glad that Simons, as a lifelong chain smoker, made it all the way to age 86. And I\u2019m glad that the Simons Foundation, which I\u2019m told will continue in perpetuity with no operational changes, will stand as a testament to his vision for the world.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

When I learned of Jim Simons’s passing, I was actually at the Simons Foundation headquarters in lower Manhattan, for the annual board meeting of the unparalleled Quanta Magazine, which Simons founded and named. The meeting was interrupted to share the sad news, before it became public … and then it was continued, because that’s obviously […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"advanced_seo_description":"","jetpack_seo_html_title":"","jetpack_seo_noindex":false,"jetpack_seo_schema_type":"","_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"{title}\n\n{excerpt}\n\n{url}","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"_wpas_customize_per_network":false,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[31],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7996","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-announcements"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/scottaaronson.blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7996","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/scottaaronson.blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/scottaaronson.blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/scottaaronson.blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/scottaaronson.blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=7996"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/scottaaronson.blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7996\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8000,"href":"https:\/\/scottaaronson.blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7996\/revisions\/8000"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/scottaaronson.blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=7996"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/scottaaronson.blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=7996"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/scottaaronson.blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=7996"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}