Jim Simons Gave Billions for Basic Science in an Era of Short-Term Thinking

photo: béatrice de géa

Jim Simons, who died last week at age 86, was one of a handful of megadonors whose philanthropic legacy will channel a belief that for society to advance, basic scientific research must be given sufficient support to thrive — even if that research requires years to bear tangible results. The Simons Foundation, which Jim cofounded with his wife Marilyn in 1994, has committed hundreds of millions of dollars to basic science – “pure” rather than applied research – in an era when federal support for such research has flattened or even declined.

The Simons Foundation has not only been an important source of grant money for researchers in this country and around the world; Jim and Marilyn also created an in-house scientific research institution within the foundation, the Flatiron Institute, dedicated to advancing the frontiers of knowledge. The institute employs its own scientists to conduct computational research in the fields of astrophysics, biology, mathematics, quantum physics and other topics.

"Jim had a deep belief in the power and importance of basic science and mathematics," said David Spergel, president of the Simons Foundation. "He was willing to take chances on individuals and give them the freedom to build novel projects and institutions. Jim was passionate about understanding origins, whether it was the origin of the universe, the origin of life, or the origin of the humans."

Simons, born in 1938 in Brookline, Massachusetts, was a gifted mathematician who earned his Ph.D. at UC Berkeley at just 23 years old. He taught at MIT and Harvard and served as a government codebreaker until his opposition to the Vietnam war forced an end to that work. In 1968, he became chairman of the mathematics department at Stony Brook University in New York. There, he contributed research that proved important in several areas of advanced math and physics. 

After a decade, he left the university for the investment business, using his background in mathematics to apply data-driven models — called quantitative analysis or “quant trading” — to investments and trading. In 1978, he established the investment firm that eventually became the hedge fund Renaissance Technologies. The fund's quantitative trading approaches were enormously successful, enabling the “Quant King” to build a fortune estimated at more than $30 billion when he passed away. Renaissance Technologies has itself seeded multiple philanthropic fortunes, both through the Simons family and via other employees.

The Simons Foundation operates programs to support researchers working on fundamental research questions in math and physics, life sciences, autism, computational sciences and other topics. The couple — Marilyn, primarily, along with Jim — led the foundation themselves until 2021, when they handed over the reins to Princeton astrophysicist David Spergel.

I spoke with Jim and Marilyn Simons by video call in 2021, shortly after they announced they were stepping back from direct leadership, and asked them about their decision to start the foundation. "Well, after doing mathematics, I got into the investment business and made a remarkable amount of money," Jim Simons told me. "I always assumed the bulk of my money would go to charity and we had been giving to charity, but Marilyn thought we could do this better through a foundation, and I liked that idea, as well."

The couple shared what Marilyn, herself a Ph.D. in economics, called a "moral imperative" to use their wealth as an engine for the good of society. "Jim's background being math and science, he wanted that to be the focus of the foundation," Marilyn said at the time. "We were very much in sync — Jim from his love of research, and for myself, as an economist, I cared so much about jobs and income and opportunities moving the economy forward."

Math and science, and new technologies, the couple said, are the foundations of the future. "We were willing to make a long-term investment to support research — investments that would benefit everybody," Jim Simons said.

Simons’ wealth has also powered philanthropic giving through his children. Son and daughter-in-law Nat Simons and Laura Baxter-Simons’ Sea Change Foundation has committed more than $500 million to climate change mitigation and clean energy causes, making it one of top philanthropic funders in those fields. Daughter Liz, with her husband Mark Heising, operates the Heising-Simons Foundation, which also supports climate and clean energy, as well as education, human rights, journalism, science and technology – including funding pertaining to AI. Additionally, daughter Audrey Cappell gives through the Foundation for a Just Society, a global, progressive grantmaker created in 2011 with a mission to advance the rights of women, girls and LGBTQI people.

Along with their investment in the Simons Foundation — assets totaled about $5 billion at the end of 2022 — Jim and Marilyn Simons maintained a strong connection with their former academic home Stony Brook University, which the couple had generously supported for 50 years. (Marilyn received both her BA and a Ph.D. there, and it's where the couple met.) Last summer, the couple ramped that up with a transformative gift of $500 million in unrestricted funding for Stony Brook, essentially doubling the school's endowment. It was one of the largest-ever donations to a public university. 

Notably, the Stony Brook gift was channeled not just from the Simons Foundation, but also from Simons Foundation International, an independent philanthropy also started by the Simons family under specific and interesting circumstances I’ll get to in a bit. As we wrote last year, the lesser-known entity funds causes that parallel the Simons Foundation’s, backing science and mathematics research around the world, and often providing general operating support, while the Simons Foundation supports individual projects and researchers in a more hands-on way.  

Simons' commitment to strengthen Stony Brook was illustrative of his desire to build research organizations and long-term collaborations that would provide a structure for generations of ongoing discovery. "In many ways, Jim was a philanthropist in the tradition of Carnegie and Rockefeller," Spergel said. "He not only funded individuals but built and strengthened institutions." This included the creation of the Simons Foundation's Flatiron Institute, but also his support for other scientific research organizations, among them, the Institute for Advanced Study and the New York Genome Center. Simons also helped establish the Simons Institute for the Theory of Computing and the Simons Laufer Mathematical Sciences Institute, both at alma mater UC Berkeley, along with the Simons Center for Geometry and Physics at Stony Brook.

It is not yet clear how Jim Simons’ passing will affect the long-term distribution of his wealth, but as noted above, Simons said he intended to devote the majority of his money to philanthropy. Marilyn Simons, who has already played a major role in the couple’s philanthropy so far, will most likely continue to do so, and it’s also possible that some portion of the estate will make it into the already hefty endowments of the younger Simons’ foundations. Of course, the Simons Foundation itself may very well stand to gain, giving it even greater horsepower to pursue its core mission. 

As the philanthropic aftermath of Jim Simons’ passing comes into greater view, there’s another big dynamic to consider: the family’s history of stockpiling offshore philanthropic wealth. 

Earlier, I mentioned Simons Foundation International, which has partnered with the much better-known Simons Foundation to fund the couple’s $500 million gift to Stony Brook University, among other collaborations. Its origins trace back to one of big-donor science philanthropy’s more colorful (and telling) episodes. It started back in the 1970s, when a non-U.S. citizen friend of Jim Simons set up an offshore trust for him as a gift. Fast forward to circa 2010, and the trust was worth billions. 

As the New York Times and other outlets reported following the revelation of the trust’s existence in 2017, a restructuring of the trust in 2010 led to the creation of Simons Foundation International (which has been reported to contain $8 billion in assets, more than the Simons Foundation itself). Meanwhile, additional money from the trust went to Simons’ children, who used it to beef up their own philanthropy, as we detailed here.

The Simons family are hardly the first to use offshore accounts to store and move philanthropic wealth. For example, the late Chuck Feeney, of spend-down Atlantic Philanthropies fame, was another. But the sheer scale of the Simons’ case was a telling reminder, if we needed one, that we’re not necessarily seeing everything when it comes to the resources that multibillionaires have on hand for their giving.

Of course, this isn’t to take away from Jim Simons’ accomplishments as a philanthropist, and the seismic impact of his fortune and his foundation on the world of science giving. In its 30 years of operation so far, the Simons Foundation has become one of the most important philanthropic organizations supporting basic research in STEM fields from astrophysics to neuroscience. 

Going forward, Jim Simons' vision for philanthropy and his support for basic science has and will continue to be of outsized importance, filling a crucial need for long-term thinking. So much of today's available scientific funding, whether from federal agencies, corporations or even philanthropy, focuses on near-term return on investment — that is, some sort of easily measurable result that can be held up as a sign of success. But science is a long game, an edifice built across decades. Society will ultimately be the poorer without support for pure research of the sort that Simons championed in his philanthropy.