天美传媒

鈥淪oybeans. Buy soybeans.鈥�

This was the advice the newly married James Simons received upon researching profitable investment ideas for a $5,000 wedding gift he and his wife had received in the early 鈥�60s. He bought the beans and then sold them for a modest profit.

What Simons didn鈥檛 realize at the time was that the soybeans were his introduction to the world of futures and commodities trading. This led him to develop a highly profitable pattern recognition formula for quantitative trading and to found the multi-billion-dollar investment management firm Renaissance Technologies in 1982.

Simons spoke with Prof. Bill Baker on the about his start in business, his attitudes toward hiring and administrative tasks, and his extensive philanthropic efforts to support high school teachers and scientific research.

Hiring the Best and Delegating the Rest

Simons said he realized early in his business career that hiring the right people was key. In 1968, Simons was charged with building and directing the new math department at Stony Brook University in New York. 鈥淚 hired the best and let them do their thing,鈥� he said.

鈥淚 love recruiting. I love finding good people,鈥� he added.

Whether at Stony Brook, or Renaissance Technologies, or the , which he and his wife, Dr. Marilyn Simons, founded together in 1994, Simons has always believed that 鈥渕anagement needs to hire the greatest people possible and give them a lot of authority and then not micromanage.鈥�

But while he loved and excelled in some aspects of business, others weren聮t his forte. 鈥淎dministration, never liked it,鈥� Simons said. 鈥淚t just wasn鈥檛 my thing. Instead, I did my best to identify the right person and have that person handle the administrative tasks.鈥�

On Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) Education

His belief in people has made its way into his foundation鈥檚 philanthropic efforts in STEM education. In 2004, through the Simons Foundation, he and his wife created to promote the recruitment, retention, training and continued support of high-quality math teachers in New York City. Currently, 10 percent of all math and science teachers in the city are a part of the program.

鈥淥ur kids in this country are not trained well in STEM; we are really behind in the U.S.,鈥� Simons stated. As a result of poor math and science programs in high school, 鈥渙ur kids aren鈥檛 going into engineering and science in college. That says to me we are failing kids in high school.鈥�

He recalled that when he was a child, teachers could make a decent living but today, 2teaching in America is no longer a well-paying, venerated job.鈥�

This is largely why Math for America was created. Simons believes that by identifying, training and supporting high-quality STEM teachers, high schools in the U.S. will improve. In fact, he hopes Congress will create a national program similar to Math for America.

鈥淚鈥檝e spoken to congressmen and congresswomen across the country. If we can get about 20% of the STEM teachers in the U.S. into a program like Math for America, it would cost roughly $2 billion that鈥檚 barely a drop in the bucket compared to the grand scheme of things.鈥�

Funding the Basics

The Simons Foundation also invests nearly $400 million each year to support researchers investigating the basic natural phenomena of the world. 鈥淏asic science is what I love,鈥� he said.

鈥淎t the Simons Foundation, we tend to fund things that the NIH wouldn鈥檛 necessarily fund in the life sciences,鈥� he explained. For example, while the National Institutes of Health (NIH) funds a lot of cancer research, it likely wouldn鈥檛 fund an expansive research project into the origins of life, 鈥渁nd that is exactly the kind of research we want to support, among a variety of others. Don鈥檛 we all want to know how we got here, where we all come from?鈥� Simons asked.

Recently, the Simons Foundation launched another major endeavor that current institutions could not undertake: the . The Flatiron Institute is an in-house research division at the Simons Foundation, wherein computational scientists are supported in tackling thorny, long-term scientific questions, free of the need to constantly reapply for grants or to publish.

Fundamentals, in science or business, are important. And there is beauty in the often surprising simplicity of fundamental truths. 鈥淎s a mathematician, one of the best compliments you can get is 鈥渙h, that鈥檚 beautiful. 鈥淚鈥檝e always been led by that,鈥� Simons explained. 鈥淲hat would be the most elegant solution to this problem? I鈥檝e approached business in this same way.鈥�