James Simons
- Net worth $18 billion
- Status Married
- Country United States
- Ethnicity Ashkenazi Jewish
- Source(-s) of wealth Businessman, Entrepreneur, Philanthropist
How much is James Simons Worth? James Simons Net Worth in 2025
James Simons Net Worth: How rich is James Simons? & How much money is James Simons worth? Time to find out!
James Simons is an American mathematician, hedge fund manager, and philanthropist and his current net worth is $18 billion.
Born as the only child of Marcia and Matthew Simons, in a Jewish family, he grew up in Brookline, Massachusetts.
From the Massachusetts Institute of Technology he received a Bachelor of Science in mathematics and a Ph.D., also in mathematics from the University of California, Berkeley.
He has founded the Renaissance Technologies, a private hedge fund, which has employed mathematical models to analyze and execute trades, many automated.
How did James Simons get famous?
The mathematician is famous for being a quantitative investor. He has retired from the fund back in 2009, but he still remains its non-executive chairman and adviser.
Most noteworthy, his hedge funds use computer-based models to predict price changes in financial instruments.
While, RIEF has historically trailed the firm’s better-known Medallion fund, a separate fund that contains only the personal money of the firm’s executives.
In contrast from his business, he is famous for his studies on pattern recognition, for which he established the Chern-Simons form. He also contributed to the development of string theory, by giving a theoretical framework to combine geometry and topology with quantum filed theory.
Also, he served as a mathematics professor at Stony Brook University, until 1978.
How does James Simons make money?
As of August 2017, his set worth is estimated at $18 billion, according to Forbes magazine.
In 2016, an asteroid 6618 Jimsimons, discovered by Clyde Tombaugh in 1936, received the name of the mathematician. The International Astronomical Union gave it to him, to honor his numerous contributions.
In addition, in 2006, he became the Financial Engineer of the Year, a title he received from the same union.
In 2007, according to estimates, he earned $2.8 billion, $1.7 billion in 2006, and $1.5 billion in 2005.
Thanks to his contributions to geometry and topology, Simons earned many recognition and awards, including the 1976 AMS Oswald Veblen Prize in Geometry.
Simons is a major contributor to Democratic Party political action committees. He currently ranked the #5 donor to federal candidates in the 2016 election cycle. So far, he has $7 million to Hillary Clinton‘s Priorities USA Action, among others.