James Harris Simons / James Harris Simons

James Harris "Jim" Simons, grandson of a shoe factory owner in Massachusetts, received a bachelor's degree in mathematics from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in 1958 year and received a doctorate, also in mathematics, at the University of Berkeley in 1962 year aged 23 years. With 1961 on 1964 he taught mathematics at MIT and Harvard. In 1964-1968 he held a research position in the Communications Research Division of the Institute for Defense Analysis. IN 1968 year he became the head of the department of mathematics at Stony Brook University. Under him, the university entered the top ten in the United States.. IN 1976 Simons received the Oswald Veblen Prize in Geometry from the American Mathematical Society for his work on multidimensional surfaces, minimizing the area, and characteristic forms. He proved Bernstein's conjecture up to the dimension 8, and also improved the regularity properties of Wendell Fleming's result on the generalized Plateau problem. IN 1978 year Simons left academic science in order to, to establish an investment fund.