Simon James Harris Story
Profile
Simon Harris James is more than just a usual co-inventor. If you have read profiles of the top code breakers and pros in pattern recognition, James Harris Simon won't probably miss out on the list of experts. The 78-year-old mathematician doubles as a hedge fund manager and the oldest philanthropist of our time.
He is remarkably popular for the development of the scientific string theory, which attempts to explain the origin of the universe. He has worked as a math professor and chairman at the Stony Brooks University. He quit teaching mathematics in 1982 and founded a business Renaissance Technology, a private company headquartered in the New York City. Simon Harris retired in 2009.
Childhood and Education
Simon Harris was born in 1938 to a Jewish Family. Apparently, he is the only child of his father, Matthew Simons, and his mother, Marcia Simons. His father was a businessman. Matthew Simons owned a successful shoe factory in Brookline, Massachusetts.
Simon Harris studied Mathematics in Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He graduated with a bachelor's degree in the same course in 1958. He also has a Ph.D. in Mathematics from the University of California. He graduated under the support and supervision of Bertram Kostant. This was in 1961, when he was 23 years of age.
Careers of Simon Harris
1. Renaissance Technologies
Simon is the founder of Renaissance Technologies, a hedge fund company that trades in different markets in different parts of the world. The company applies mathematical models for many automation as well as trade executions. Thanks to the advancement in technology, the company uses advanced computer-based model technology to forecast and determine changes in the price of commodities in financial instruments. At the time of establishment, probably until today, the company does not have even one employee with a financial background. Instead, the company hires signal processing experts, mathematicians, physicists, and statistical analysts. Apparently, the Renaissance Institutional Equities Fund is the only latest fund of the company.
2. Science and Academics
If there were the best mathematician of the early 1900s today, then Sam Harris definitely appears in the list of top five. During his academic and scientific career, Sam focused on geometry as well as topology. He is the author of the Berkeley Ph.D. thesis, an in-depth research which gave a new and more conceptual proof of the Berger’s classification. Today, his thesis is the preliminary and the strongest foundation of geometry.
Sam Harris also worked with the National Security Agency in 1964. His main role was to break codes. For the next four years, until 1968, Simon worked for the Institute for Defense Analyses (IDA) in the Communication Research Division.
He was also a math teacher at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Sam Harris also taught mathematics at Harvard University. He was a member of the Stony Brook University, where he was appointed the Chairperson of mathematics department of the institution.
Simon Sam Harris is the founder of Math for America. He founded the non-profit organization in 2004 with the preliminary goal of improving the standards of learning and teaching mathematics in the United States of America. To ascertain the improvement of math in public school, the organization recruited highly qualified teachers with the help of its founder.
Sam still funds a number of projects, irrespective of the fact that he has already retired.
Sam Harris, the Philanthropist
Simon Sam Harris and his wife Marilyn Simons co-founded a charitable organization, the Simons Foundation, to offer support to health and education projects. The non-profitable startup also offers support to scientific related projects and research.
In 2006, Sam gave a massive donation of $25 Million to Stony Brook University. This was the largest donation he ever gave to a university in the United States of America.
