
A Billionaire Mathematician’s Life of Ferocious Curiosity - zeeshanm
http://mobile.nytimes.com/2014/07/08/science/a-billionaire-mathematicians-life-of-ferocious-curiosity.html?referrer=
======
nemo44x
I went to college with his late son, Nick. Nick was a good guy and their
family was really welcoming and friendly. I remember speaking with Jim during
the .com crash as I was getting my CS degree and he mentioned a CS degree is a
great thing to have if you love it - keep at it. Solid advice at the time.

But make no mistake - when he says he wasn't as fast as some of the others,
it's a whole different ballgame. He's a world class genius with creativity and
personality to boot. He's also a good guy who is quite generous.

~~~
mdkras
Yeah - It seems strange that the early parts of the article try to paint him
as one who has failed but still overcome adversity. It is challenging to argue
that at any point he wasn't very, very successful.

It would seem more appropriate to point out that despite his tremendous
capabilities, he still has faults and has experienced awful tragedy. The
article veers that way towards the end.

Sounds like good people; glad to read about someone with substantial means
helping drive education and science.

~~~
BrandonMarc
Good point. I suspect that the author is accustomed to a certain narrative -
triumph over adversity - or, believes news readers are more keen to that kind
of story.

------
troymc
Not mentioned in the article, but probably familiar to others on HN, the
Simons Foundation also supports Quanta Magazine (e.g. see their recent article
about pilot wave theory [1]) and arXiv.org (an archive of pre-publication
papers, mostly in physics and mathematics).

[1] [http://www.simonsfoundation.org/quanta/20140624-fluid-
tests-...](http://www.simonsfoundation.org/quanta/20140624-fluid-tests-hint-
at-concrete-quantum-reality/)

~~~
dekhn
Some of the highest quality science journalism I've seen.

------
nitinics
FYI
[http://www.nsi.edu.np/?option=com_content&func=details&id=36](http://www.nsi.edu.np/?option=com_content&func=details&id=36).
This is the story about Nick. How he went to Nepal, worked there, grew fonder
and after his death - still lives with the organization that helps train and
support healthcare workers in rural Nepal. I am from Nepal, I love
mathematics, computing and sustainable development and good to know about his
father, today.

~~~
nemo44x
Thank you for that. Nick was a friend of mine and I miss him. He loved Nepal
and working there.

------
josu
If you are interested in working for his company, there seem to be some
openings for programmers:
[https://www.rentec.com/vm/jobs.vm](https://www.rentec.com/vm/jobs.vm)

~~~
grmarcil
Couldn't help but smile at this. This is kind of the quant finance equivalent
of pointing out that the Navy SEALs are taking applications.

~~~
coldtea
Well, the Navy SEALs are taking applications. And it's not that difficult to
get in, if you're determined enough and in a healthy condition.

People on HN work in ever more prestigious and/or difficult to get in
companies that this.

~~~
jburwell
You clearly do not understand physical and mental capacity required to
complete BUD/S and SQT nor have you ever meet a current or former Tier 1
operator. Navy SEALs are not only some of the most physically talent people on
Earth, but also some of the smartest. 100-110 of the most physically fit,
determined folks you'll ever meet start BUD/S every quarter, and only 10-20
graduate -- easily more difficult to land a position as an operator than
almost any job you can imagine.

~~~
spacefight
One could argue, that some of the smartest people can hardly be smart if they
voluntarily join a military force.

~~~
spain
Doesn't seem like that great of an argument to me.

~~~
mahyarm
It's not very good for one's life expectancy or mental health, and if you are
that good, you could make far more money doing other things.

~~~
cpwright
If you're doing it, you're probably not in it for the money. Just as most
people who work for a non-profit are also not in it for the money. Do you
assume that everyone who works for a non-profit because they believe in the
cause can't actually be very bright? You might not agree with their
motivations, but that doesn't mean they can't be every bit as smart as someone
who decides to go off and make as much money as possible.

~~~
coldtea
> _If you 're doing it, you're probably not in it for the money._

Sure. But any other motive for doing such a thing is probably less smart too.

~~~
scrapcode
"Such a thing," in this case being the military, encapsulates multiple
industries including computer science and information technology. In the
United States it could also mean the benefit of a full ride education along
with highly technical military training. Complete health care, job security,
global travel opportunities... Since you seem to be fixated on the notion that
if there isn't and tangible reward than it is less smart than the choice you'd
make.

Not to mention that such a choice most likely satisfies passion and honor
within a person.

~~~
josu
>Not to mention that such a choice most likely satisfies passion and honor
within a person.

If you are saying that any person that satisfies his passions and honor is
considered smart, or that a person that works in something that gives him
satisfaction is considered smart, then you are just twisting the definition of
smart.

------
TheBiv
FYI The Physics of Wall Street gives a lot of reference to what type of
trading James does, and chronicles a lot of James's history! The book also
goes into a lot of the history of these types of traders! It is an insanely
interesting read!

[http://www.amazon.com/dp/0544112431](http://www.amazon.com/dp/0544112431)

~~~
foobarqux
I doubt it. No one seems to know their strategies or replicate their returns.

~~~
TDL
It's not necessary to know what quants are trading at the moment to write
about the "type" of trades they make.

~~~
foobarqux
But the information isn't particularly interesting. What people want to know
is what is the "magic".

------
carlob
I met the man a few years ago. He was touring one of his many academic
endeavors and he wanted a full day of seminars to see how the research he was
financing was advancing. I was really impressed by the scope of his questions,
which were about things completely outside his previous research
(computational/quantitative biology mostly).

~~~
psykotic
If you mean his background was in computational biology, you must be thinking
of David Shaw, not Jim Simons.

~~~
carlob
What I meant was that the talks were about computational biology.

------
hyperliner
Speculating (never actually been involved in hedge fund or super advanced
math): what are some potential ideas that RenTec could be working on? Please
state your speculation in terms of the mathematical / investment problem to be
solved.

My super simple experience here relates to optimizing portfolios along the
efficient frontier
([http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Efficient_frontier](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Efficient_frontier))
which is a relatively simple problem, but I am interested in _knowing what I
don 't know_.

~~~
Tycho
There's a very long multi-year thread at a website called Nuclear Phynance
about this. Nobody seemed to have the faintest clue although amusingly some of
the more outlandish suggestions were later (laughingly) cited by an insider in
an interview.

One decent general idea was that RenTec was willing to entertain purely
statistical signals with no intuition to back them up (or, alternatively,
unintuitive signals which you can explain in plain language but sound stupid).

There was an intesting quote from Simons about how astronomers are the best
suited hires because they are used to making measurements/hypotheses purely
from observation, without the chance to do controlled experiments. It was also
noted that they seemed to employ a lot of NLP specialists, although consensus
was that this was down to pattern recognition rather than anything to do with
language.

The best suggestion (or at least the best sounding one) was that they were
doing hidden-markov models which took into accound second and third order
effects. And then there's always just the 'best execution' argument (doing
basic market making but engineering better systems than anyone else).

However information on them is so scarce I sometimes wonder if most of what we
hear is pure myth.

~~~
bradleyjg
It's obviously not the secret sauce, but they have also used some ...
aggressive tax maneuvers: [http://dealbreaker.com/2013/07/renaissance-
technologies-buy-...](http://dealbreaker.com/2013/07/renaissance-technologies-
buy-and-hold-investor/)

~~~
saym
Haha, aggressive indeed. What are people's opinions on regulating this kind of
sidestepping?

Seems to me the status quo of regulation means a constant game of catch-up. No
governing body has the ability to say 'You can't do that' until it's too late.

------
taurath
He says "if I can do it, so can you" \- he had a doctorate at age 23, which is
not something most people can do, even if they have the intelligence and
drive. Very interesting person for sure.

------
schoen
Can anybody make an attempt at explaining the content of "Axiomatic
Characterization of Ordinary Differential Cohomology" further than the article
did?

I don't know any algebraic topology; the idea of

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homology_%28mathematics%29](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homology_%28mathematics%29)

looks extremely clever to me but I can see where this subject matter would
start to get challenging to explain.

~~~
j2kun
It builds not just on algebraic topology, but algebraic geometry, differential
manifolds, and category theory (which underlies all three of these). If you
don't have at least passing familiarity with the core content of these fields,
you're probably not going to find an explanation worth spending any time on.

A better place to start might be de Rham cohomology:
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/De_Rham_cohomology](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/De_Rham_cohomology)

~~~
schoen
Thanks! I think I'll go off and study some mathematics.

------
igivanov
It's all fascinating all right in many respects, but doesn't the noble
business of fast trades and hedge funds give anyone on HN creeps anymore?
After all it's moneymaking in a form of taxing the society as a whole (if you
think that this money comes out of nowhere or somehow is a newly created
value, think again).

Of course he used some of this money for good purposes, but still.

~~~
saym
So, I'm against HFTs that trade on faster connections than others in the same
pool. That advantage makes other traders BE the news on which to trade.

But I think HFTs in a marketplace where execution speed is equal can serve to
provide liquidity, not siphon it out.

I could be wrong, but I'll wait to be more enlightened on the subject to
change my opinion.

~~~
igivanov
Why do you need millisecond(or is it microsecond?)-fast liquidity? What's
wrong if there's a 10s or 1min window?

------
biohax2015
Anyone wanna demonstrate how one would formalize the phrase "pass it on"?

~~~
tunesmith
In symbolic modal logic, it would be along the lines of... if an action is
done to you, then accept the belief of the imperative of doing that action to
another. So, it would be a command for you to intend to do that action to
another.

Axu -> _u_: A_u_y

(those are supposed to be underlines indicating imperatives.) This is the same
sort of convention that Harry Gensler uses to prove the Golden Rule using his
Formal Ethics system. (I should note I am not a logician and this is probably
only a rough approximation - not sure whether it's appropriate to use A
instead of a, etc.)

~~~
schoen
Is it clear to everybody from the context whether he meant "pass it on" in the
sense of "pay it forward" or "pass it on" in the sense of "repeat this
message"?

I was thinking first of the game of Telephone. "James Simons is a
mathematician, pass it on!"

------
cliveowen
Strange how I never heard of him before. While being both rich and an
extremely accomplished individual, he seems to defy the stereotype of the mad
genius.

~~~
nilkn
I only know about him because of Renaissance Technologies, which is renowned
in some circles as being extraordinarily hard to get a job at. They're known
for snagging repeat Putnam Fellows. Last I heard Reid Barton ended up there.

~~~
tomp
The Putnam Competition questions seem very interesting.

[http://kskedlaya.org/putnam-archive/](http://kskedlaya.org/putnam-archive/)

~~~
whatusername
2546 days ago....

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35079](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35079)

~~~
kooshball
That's a pretty funny thread.

Near the bottom you see this guy talking about his startup ideas and Drew
Houston replies and asked him if he wants to help with Dropbox.

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35088](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35088)

~~~
whatusername
And of course -- Colin's tarsnap is still essentially the same as it ever was
(a brilliant technical solution with awful marketing) - and Dropbox is one of
the jewel's in YC's crown.

(See this recent post on tarsnap:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7523953](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7523953)
)

------
foobarqux
The article distorts the history of RenTech. I believe Simons started doing
non-quant trading and he acquired RenTech, which was started by Berlekamp.

~~~
tzs
That does not appear to be the case, at least according to anything I've been
able to find with a bit of searching. I think you are thinking of Axcom, which
RenTec acquired. Axcom was associated with Berlekamp (he was either founder,
co-founder, or purchased a majority interest after it was founded...the
internet is unclear on this).

~~~
auntienomen
There was a Bloomberg article about this some years ago.

Axcom was run by James Ax, and jointly owned by Ax & Simons. (Axcom was a
'trading advisor'. They made recommendations to Renaissance, which managed a
fund based on these recommendations.) Ax was in essence hired by Simons to
explore & develop quantitative trading ideas Simons & Baum had come up with
while they were making more traditional trades.

Berlekamp came along several years later, as a consultant. One can find claims
that he developed a lot of RenTech's IP, but as far as I can tell these claims
are sourced from Berlekamp himself. Since Berlekamp's own fund went out of
business after a few years of operation, I'm inclined to dismiss these claims
as marketing.

~~~
vellum
> There was a Bloomberg article about this some years ago.

[http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=nw&pname=mm_0108_stor...](http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=nw&pname=mm_0108_story1.html)

------
kyberias
The article mentions his interest in "gene puzzles". Does anyone know what
does this refer to exactly?

~~~
ZBA
Generally, it just applies to understanding how certain genes underlie the
genetic basis of certain genetic diseases.

I believe Simons in particular funds areas of computational biology that
strive to gain insight into the cascade effect. This occurs in many diseases,
which make them seem nearly incurable, like sepsis or cancer. For example,
when TNF (tumor necrosis factor0 activates inappropriately on the periphery of
a cell it, to dramatically simplify, leads to growth during inappropriate
stages of your life (adulthood), and triggers a cascade of thousands of
events. When one event is altered, the cascade goes through a different
direction, to the same goal. So understanding the pathway, and how everything
interacts, is something I know the Simons foundation has funded in the past.
With the hope that one day medications that properly fight the cascade can be
achieved.

------
jflowers45
Seems like a good dude who's using his brain and his money to advance
important fields.

------
pyfish
An amazing man and a testament to the power of curiosity.

------
linux_devil
Inspirational !

------
hackuser
I see sentences like this one in more and more articles these days:

> Dr. Simons now runs a tidy universe of science endeavors, financing not only
> math teachers but hundreds of the world’s best investigators, even as
> Washington has reduced its support for scientific research.

A predictable consequence of reducing government spending is that the
population becomes dependent on, and concentrates power in the hands of, a few
wealthy citizens. For example, I've read that if you need funding for
research, you should seriously consider networking with the very wealthy. If
you run a charity, probably you need to focus on the same. Will these patrons
support academic freedom? An organization that challenges the social order?
What if your research upsets someone; is your career/organization at risk?
Will their ideas and whims serve the nation and world?

(I'm not criticizing of Simons' philanthropy; I'm against shrinking government
investment in research and other social goods.)

~~~
Tycho
That's the way it should be, IMO. Government research leads to things like
WMDs.

~~~
AlexandrB
Also penicillin and the smallpox vaccine, the internet - but you know,
whatever...

~~~
spikels
Amazing how people simply make up facts to support their ideology. Both
penicillin and smallpox vaccine were discovered with little if any government
support. But you know, whatever...

~~~
AlexandrB
Not being a historian, I actually read Wikipedia before posting that. I guess
I was confused on the smallpox vaccines creation which seems to involve a lot
of actors. What's certain however, is that the vaccine's dissemination and the
eventual eradication of smallpox was pushed by the World Health Organization
(part of the UN) and so was a government initiative. [1]

Penicillin was discovered by Alexander Fleming as part of research in a public
institution (St. Mary's Hospital). [2]

I guess my larger point (which you deftly avoided addressing) is that the
government is not a boogeyman creating evil technologies nor does it have a
monopoly on evil shit. I also have a hard time imagining a motive for a for-
profit organization to eradicate a disease world-wide. Something that
government organizations have achieved almost twice (polio is nearly wiped
out).

[1]
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smallpox#Eradication](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smallpox#Eradication)
[2]
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pennicilin#Discovery](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pennicilin#Discovery)

~~~
Tycho
St Mary's Hospital was not government controlled or funded when Fleming was
working there. It was one of the 'voluntary hospitals' supported by
philanthropy and private donors. Furthermore, if you read the history of
penicillin [1] you can see a long history of tinkering (meaning the discovery
was somewhat inevitable) and that Pfizer, Inc. worked out how to mass produce
it.

But you know, whatever...

[1]
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_penicillin](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_penicillin)

------
michaelochurch
I have a few friends who worked at RenTech, and the one thing that bothers me
is the secrecy. It's the one company I know of (outside of security-clearance
jobs) where you're not allowed to say that you worked there. I feel like that
probably makes it harder for people to resume their careers if they leave.
Given that the best way to get a decent startup/VC job is to come out of a
hedge fund, I can imagine it hurting people if they can't say where they
worked.

I've heard that there's PhD bigotry there, too, and that's it's nearly
impossible to get in if you don't have a PhD; but I don't know enough to
confirm or deny that. It could be completely untrue, or it could just be that
most people who make the cut and know about RenTech happen to have PhDs.

He sounds like a stand-up guy, though, and compared to the ethical dirt on an
average Silicon Valley CEO, this stuff (which isn't even ethical dirt so much
as practical disagreement) is negligible.

~~~
zeeshanm
A friend of mine got an interview there while he was still in in school for
undergrad.

~~~
ZBA
Mind if I ask what his degree was in? Would imagine it was something like
computer science, as I've only ever heard of those in maths/stats/physics
getting in with a PhD.

~~~
zeeshanm
He studied applied math and psychology. But you're right they're biased toward
cs majors.

------
mempko
Another "if i can do it, so can you" story. Fuck that message , I am never
going to be a billionaire and you won't be either. And it isn't for a lack of
talent, or effort.

~~~
patio11
There are literally more billionaires on HN than people in the US who could
write "Axiomatic Characterization of Ordinary Differential Cohomology."

Apparently some folks are motivated to strive towards those statuses. Not
quite my cup of tea, but I wouldn't discourage them or say those goals are
flatly impossible.

~~~
nmrm
Do you mean originate and write the paper?

Or do you mean just maybe understand the general essence of the paper's title,
and understand major contributions after spending some time reading the paper?

If the former, well... yes. That's probably true for almost all significant
research, especially in mathematics.

If the latter, I think you're probably wrong. And that's not to trivialize the
work presented in the paper; if anything, the contrary -- the paper's actually
quite well-written.

~~~
patio11
I meant "write" in the usual sense as it is applied to academic research.

~~~
nmrm
Counting up the number of people who could've written a given non-anonymous
paper is pretty unheard of in academia afaik. The answer is usually politely
assumed to be "exactly the number of authors". I've certainly never seen this
behavior. So I'm not sure your answer is actually at all clarifying.

Probably, and this is just a guess, neither Simons or Sullivan claim they
could've written the paper alone. And it's certainly impossible to write
essentially the same paper without plagiarizing. So probably there are either
zero or two people who meet the "could've written this paper" criteria.

So, why didn't you just say "there are more than zero/two billionaires who
read HN"? Seems less round-about.

~~~
noahc
You're over thinking this. He means a handful + 3.

------
dsugarman
the power of Stony Brook University

------
elwell
> One morning in Katmandu, as he relaxed on a hotel porch, the structure of a
> proof suddenly came to him.

~~~
gwern
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Incubation_%28psychology%29](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Incubation_%28psychology%29)
at work?

------
downandout
A bit off topic, but he made his money managing hedge funds. There are lots of
"quant" type people that could do as well as he has, but almost no one has
access to tens or hundreds of millions of dollars of others' money to deploy.
While some attempts have been made, I haven't yet seen a decent solution to
bring the best forecasting together with large amounts of capital. Somebody
please work on that.

