James Harris Simons

James Harris “Jim” Simons, a grandson of the owner of a shoe factory in Massachusetts, received a bachelor’s degree in Mathematics, Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in 1958 and received his Ph.D., also in mathematics at UC Berkeley in 1962 at the age of 23 years. From 1961 to 1964 he taught mathematics at MIT and Harvard. In 1964-1968 he held a research position in the Communications Research Division of the Institute of Defense Analysis. In 1968 he became head of the mathematics department at Stony Brook University. During his university entered the top ten in the U.S.. In 1976, Simons was Oswald Veblen Prize in Geometry American Mathematical Society for his work on multi-dimensional surfaces that minimize area, and characteristic forms. He proved the assumption Bernstein until dimension 8, and also improved the properties of regularity result Wendell H. Fleming on the generalized Plateau problem. In 1978, Simons left academia in order to establish an investment fund.