Talk:Jim Simons

Opening Remarks

Welcome to the talk page for James Harris Simons.

Jim Simons is a unique individual -- a world-class scientist, a seemingly boundless money-maker (perhaps the most successful in history), and a philanthropist with very specific goals and agendas. He is private, guarded, even secretive. Most of the material in this article has been gleaned from the little that has been reported about him on the Internet. He rarely gives interviews.

I am in no way an authority on Simons, and wish to avoid giving that impression.

My decision to write the ariticle is based on the following: He merits a thorough, well-written encyclopedic entry, and none yet existed; he is an interesting subject; his place in history is still "in development"; and Simons presents some unique challenges to the writer.

One challenge is to write about the mathematical ideas and theories accurately. This aspect of the article will receive special focus, attention and research by me over time, and of course I hope those with expertise will lend a hand. My end goal is that the cognoscenti will find the portion of the article well-written and meaningful.

-- Paul Klenk, Kew Gardens, Queens, August 16, 2005

Bernstein

Regarding this statement: "This resulted in his proof of the Bernstein conjecture," I am unaware that Simons himself actually wrote a "proof" of the Bernstein conjecture. Is there anything to support this? The way it was worded before merely indicated that, as a result of his theory, the conjecture became proved. Your thoughts?

paul klenk ^talk 06:42, 28 September 2005 (UTC)

My reference was [1]. This is not my area of speciality, but the paper claims that the result therein proves Bernstein's conjecture up through real dimension 8; in other words, the Bernstein conjecture is proved as a consequence of the more general results in this paper. The paper also mentions that there were previous results of Almgren that established the Bernstein conjecture in real dimension 5 (presumably in lower dimensions as well, but I don't know for sure about this point). Hope that helps. - Gauge 21:54, 2 October 2005 (UTC)

See also "History of the Plateau Problem" at [2]. Page 10 mentions Simons' extension of earlier results of Fleming. - Gauge 22:04, 2 October 2005 (UTC)

Also, Enrico Bombieri showed that Bernstein's conjecture is false for real dimension 9, so Simons' result was apparently one of the last steps in this program. See [3] - Gauge 22:17, 2 October 2005 (UTC)

Gauge, thanks for your excellent research. I may have over-complicated my question, which is simple:

1. Did Jim Simons himself deliberately publish a proof of the conjecture, in which he says, "Here, see what I wrote... This is my proof of the conjecture," or...
2. Did his theory result in another person coming along, looking at his paper, and saying, "See here, Simons' work touches on matters which are related to the Bernstein conjecture; if you apply his work, you can actually now prove it!"

Does this make sense? It's a simple matter of wording. Either he "did" the proof, or his work was used by someone else to do it. It may sound nit-picky, but in such a matter we want to be clear, so our readers know what we are telling them. paul klenk ^talk 22:21, 2 October 2005 (UTC)

In this sense, Simons himself realized that his work constituted a proof of the Bernstein conjecture — he says so right in the paper. The first possibility you mention above is the correct one. Hope that clears things up. - Gauge 05:22, 19 December 2005 (UTC)

The link Bernstein conjecture redirects to Bernstein's constant. That page states a conjecture by Bernstein and says that it was disproved by Varga and Carpenter, 1987. I don't see the connection. Is the redirect wrong? Penguian (talk) 10:21, 18 April 2008 (UTC)

It is most assuredly wrong. The Bernstein Conjecture that Simons worked on has nothing to do with the approximation of the absolute value function on [-1,1] by polynomials.

This is the Bernstein conjecture that in 1968 Simons proved true through dimension n = 8:

"Let f:R^n-1 → R be a smooth (i.e., C^∞) function whose graph S is a minimal surface in Rⁿ. Then (conjecturally) S is a linear subspace of Rⁿ."

Simons also proposed possible counterexamples, in half of all higher dimensions, that were in 1969 proved correct by Bombieri, deGiorgi, and Giusti; together with further results in their paper, the Bernstein Conjecture was shown to fail for all n ≥ 9.Daqu (talk) 02:02, 13 May 2009 (UTC)

I have changed the link to direct to the page for "Bernstein's Problem" which refers to the correct conjecture. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 128.119.47.28 (talk) 16:27, 28 March 2011 (UTC)

Cryptography

I had added a small comment to the article about Simons work on the Lucifer cipher which was a direct predecessor to DES. This information comes from direct interviews with Simons in Steven Levy's book Crypto. Kupojsin (talk) 01:52, 4 August 2011 (UTC)

Unique streak

The section Unique Streak is unsourced, approaches libel, and should be removed. JFW | T@lk 12:36, 18 December 2005 (UTC)

Earning in 2005

Traders Monthly says he earned $0.9-1.0 billion in 2005, while Institutional Investor says he earned $1.5 billion. Shawnc 01:03, 28 May 2006 (UTC)

Birthdate

He's tagged as Category:1921_births, but the text says he received his bachelors in 1958 and then his Ph.D at age 23. That would mean he's a 1935 birth or later (probably more like 1938-40). What's correct?

The March 2007 Forbes blurb on him[4] says he is 69 so I'm guessing 1938. Between the Forbes source and whatever source says his Ph.D. was at age 23, it is very doubtful he was a 1921 birth so I'm removing that category (it was added at this point). --Georgeryp 03:51, 2 May 2007 (UTC)

Mathematician or physicist?

Wouldn't Simons be better described as a mathematician rather than a mathematical physicist? His work with Chern, e.g., was a project in pure mathematics, carried out before there was any idea of its applications in string theory. Ishboyfay 18:22, 27 April 2007 (UTC)

Benjamin quote

We quote First Post (who they?) quoting Simons quoting Animal Farm. So there's quite a long chain there. But I can't imagine that Orwell would ever have written "rather of". Not sure whether just a "[sic]" would be appropriate or what, but I am sure there is something wrong somewhere. Telsa (talk) 08:32, 17 June 2007 (UTC)

I think it's obvious they're quoting Simons' as he paraphrases the Orwell quote. paul klenk ^talk 17:03, 24 October 2009 (UTC)

'Diversity'

Is it really NPOV to say that Renaissance has employees from 'countries as diverse as Cuba and Japan'? Especially considering that one is the US' main trading partner and the other an island just off the mainland. <sarcasm>How about adding "and employs age groups as diverse as 25 to 40"?</sarcasm>87.112.71.100 16:32, 19 August 2007 (UTC)

Photo

I've uploaded a photo I took of Simons giving a lecture at MSRI last May. I believe it's licensed appropriately for use in this page. http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Image:Jim_Simons_at_MSRI.jpg Gleuschk (talk) 14:32, 20 January 2008 (UTC)

2 Ph.D's?

Is this article claiming that Simons has 2 Ph.D's, or that he has 1 Ph.D in Math&Literature? The first would be very surprising and the second cannot be true. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 75.209.35.44 (talk) 04:52, 10 January 2009 (UTC)

Stocks traded

Anyone know an article or information on what stocks he shorted to make that much in 2008? —Preceding unsigned comment added by Ericg33 (talk • contribs) 18:15, 25 March 2009 (UTC)

2007

Simons' earnings in 2007 are given variously as $2.8 and $1.7 billion. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 86.177.249.165 (talk) 13:19, 6 October 2009 (UTC)

Spam

Gregory Zuckerman, James Harris Simons and Edward Witten might possibly tell us how clever Bernie Madoff is. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 87.74.1.47 (talk) 15:11, 6 October 2009 (UTC) See Bernard Madoff. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 86.180.182.155 (talk) 11:49, 7 December 2009 (UTC)

The Bloomberg article has 1993, not 1991, for the start of Stony Brook's investment in Madoff. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 93.97.194.200 (talk) 15:44, 11 November 2010 (UTC)

The amount lost by the Simons family foundation to Madoff can not be easily ascertained. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 81.148.87.64 (talk) 14:26, 15 December 2010 (UTC)

It seems to be about $5,000,000 but this is a wild guess. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 93.97.194.200 (talk) 15:28, 5 January 2011 (UTC)

I would say "wild guess" is exactly what "not easily ascertained" means. Kupojsin (talk) 01:46, 4 August 2011 (UTC)

Paragraph on "Nova Fund" doesn't match the citation

The following paragraph does not match its citation: "Observers have been wondering how Renaissance's in-house Medallion Fund has managed to continue to outperform the stock market handily while funds open to outside investors have performed miserably. The violation could be related to the Nova Fund, a hedge fund that had very high returns which was mysteriously subsumed by the internal Medallion Fund."

The citation is a Wall Street Journal article entitled, "Simons Questioned by Investors". This article makes no mention of a "Nova Fund" and instead states that RIEF holds US equities for a long-term holding whereas the Medallion Fund is a global short-term fund. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 68.174.156.39 (talk) 01:15, 22 January 2012 (UTC)

I agree; I think the paragraph in question should either be removed or rewritten to stick to the sources. I think the tone (words like "handily", "miserably", "violation", "mysteriously") improperly suggest malfeasance and violate neutrality. Also, I just removed the paragraph that came afterwards, where the reference given did not support any of the claims made.

User:Declaration1776 16:46, 23 July 2013 (UTC)

Note

Early leftist ideas could be mentioned. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 94.193.134.88 (talk) 11:34, 24 April 2012 (UTC)