Me and Jim Simons

In his column($) in today's New York Times, Roger Cohen highlights Jim Simons as follows:

"At the top [of this year's list of the 25 highest paid hedge-fund managers, published by Alpha magazine], was James Simons of Renaissance Technologies with $1.7 billion.
Simons used to crack codes for the U.S. Defense Department before moving on. Good luck to him. It is clearly more lucrative to detect small pricing anomalies in the Polish zloty or penny stocks - piling into them with your clients' billions - than to ponder clandestine North Korean signals."

It is true that Simons worked for a time at the Institute for Defense Analysis (IDA) in Princeton, NJ, but it is more accurate to say that he was a Ph.D. mathematician, and a very good one at that. After leaving IDA, he became chairman of the Math Department at S.U.N.Y., Stony Brook, on Long Island. (Now the University at Stony Brook) I was an Assistant Professor there for four years after getting my Ph.D. in 1966. In those days Stony Brook was "on the make", and I, along with others, served as a "warm body", someone who could get the job done until being replaced by someone better. One thing they were lacking was a "name" chairman, which they kept trolling for.

Simons was interviewed in the Spring of 1968, and gave a colloquium talk. I introduced him as Professor James Simons of Princeton University, to which he responded "Forget the 'Professor', forget the 'Princeton'". At any rate, he was offered and accepted the chairmanship (The joke at the time was that we had a better than average chance of landing him, since he was at the moment unemployed!), and he succeeded in building up a very strong Department. A few anecdotes:

During my last year there ('69-'70) Simons had a big party for a famous speaker (who later won a Fields Medal, but as to his name I shall remain mum). At some point, I was asked to provide some "pot" so they could "turn on" [mum]. I lived nearby, and that being the Age of Aquarius, I had my little stash, so I complied with the request. The next day, one of my colleagues, who was definitely not of the "flower child" generation, and who was at the party, said he was shocked because his wife had been offered "some pot". I found this a bit ironic, since I had been the source of the cannabis. I believe I later cautioned Simons to be more careful about who was served what at his parties. After all, he was the Chairman!

As I said, I lived near his house. I was non-renewed in the Spring of 1970 (to be effective a year later). One day, before I was officially given the axe, he dropped me off at the house I rented, and he commented "Gee, that's a nice place. I hope we can keep it in the Department."
(More anecdotes to come.)