Jim Simons: Life Lessons from the ‘World’s Smartest Billionaire’ (#054)

Into the Impossible With Brian Keating

Brian Keating

Physics, Natural Sciences, Science

4.7 • 1.1K Ratings

🗓️ 27 June 2020

⏱️ 85 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Mathematician, codebreaker, Professor, hedge fund pioneer, & philanthropist Jim Simons makes his first-ever podcast appearance on this episode of INTO THE IMPOSSIBLE with UC San Diego Professor Brian Keating. Learn about Chern-Simons theory, leadership lessons, hedge funds, and a dedication to serve the world through basic research from a master. It is truly a delight to share with you the more personal side of the man who’s been called The World’s Smartest Billionaire: https://youtu.be/gjVDqfUhXOY In this interview, we discuss heroes, fatherhood, leadership and the art of math. 00:15:15 Why he’d invite Abraham Lincoln to dinner. 00:23:42 Discovering Zeno’s paradox at the age of three. 00:34:28 Can math be beautiful? 00:46:25 Lessons from a master investor: alpha vs. beta. 00:56:06 The serendipitous Chern-Simons partnership. 01:03:18 A father’s love. 01:11:09 The legacy of a good example. Jim Simons earned a Ph.D. in mathematics from UC Berkeley at the age of 23. He worked as a mathematician for the NSA and as a professor and department chair at Stony Brook University. Simons earned billions after founding the hedge fund firm Renaissance Technologies. He co-founded the Simons Foundation with his wife Marilyn in 1994 to advance scientific research. The foundation provided funding for the Simons Observatory, a telescope array being built in the Atacama Desert of Northern Chile https://simonsobservatory.org/ Simons also founded Math For America in 2004 to facilitate better math education. Watch a TED interview with Jim Simons https://youtu.be/U5kIdtMJGc8 Learn about the Simons Observatory, including the Simons-National Society of Black Physicists Scholars Program (SNSP) https://simonsobservatory.org/snsp.php Learn more about the Simons Foundation on the web: https://www.simonsfoundation.org follow them on Twitter: https://twitter.com/SimonsFdn Please subscribe, rate, and review the INTO THE IMPOSSIBLE Podcast on iTunes: https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/into-the-impossible/id1169885840?mt=2 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.
0:07.0	Welcome everybody to this episode of the Into the Impossible
0:14.1	Podcast production of the Arthur C. Clark Center for Human
0:18.3	Imagination at UC San Diego. I am your fearful host Brian Keating, co-director of the Arthur C. Clark Center for Human
0:25.8	Imagination, a professor of physics at UC San Diego.
0:29.7	And today's a very special day because I don't often get to interview people that have known me since before I was born and people who have played such a huge role in my life in particular, but in literally, you you know millions of people around the
0:43.7	world's lives and that's none other than Jim Simons Dr Jim Simons who's joining us
0:48.7	from New York where he has been sheltering, I presume,
0:53.3	for quite some time.
0:54.5	Jim, welcome to the Into the Impossible Podcast.
0:57.8	Well, thanks, glad to be here.
1:00.0	Glad to be here.
1:01.6	So this podcast is really a discussion of ideas with great intellectuals and
1:06.2	thinkers and I always like to get to know people a little bit better. Usually I
1:11.2	ask questions about their books or so forth, but what I want to start off with you is to kind of ask you if, you know, somebody, an alien abducted you and could speak English to you and asked you who are you
1:25.6	how would you answer that question what defines Jim Simons to you?
1:29.8	Who am I and what how do I define myself?
1:37.0	Yeah.
1:38.0	Scientists, the philanthropist,
1:42.0	hmm?
1:44.0	Well, I've been three things.
1:47.0	I've been a mathematician.
	...

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