James Simons

James H. Simons was Chair of the Simons Foundation, which is dedicated to advancing the frontiers of research in mathematics and the basic sciences. Prior to founding Renaissance Technologies, a highly quantitative investment firm, in 1982, Simons was a cryptanalyst at the Institute of Defense Analyses in Princeton, taught mathematics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Harvard University, and chaired the mathematics department at the State University of New York at Stony Brook. Founder and Chair of Math for America, a nonprofit organization dedicated to significantly improving math education in public schools, Simons was Trustee Emeritus of the Institute for Advanced Study's Board of Trustees, which he joined in 2001.

Simons's most influential research involves the discovery and application of certain geometric measurements, now called the Chern-Simons invariants, which have wide use, particularly in theoretical physics.