{"id":109334,"date":"2023-08-02T11:04:00","date_gmt":"2023-08-02T15:04:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.shortform.com\/blog\/?p=109334"},"modified":"2023-08-02T11:22:13","modified_gmt":"2023-08-02T15:22:13","slug":"jim-simons-mathematics","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.shortform.com\/blog\/jim-simons-mathematics\/","title":{"rendered":"Jim Simons and Mathematics: A Passion-Turned-Career"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>Where did Jim Simons&#8217;s love for mathematics come from? How did he turn his childhood passion into a groundbreaking career?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>For Jim Simons, mathematics is everything. According to <em>The Man Who Solved the Market<\/em> by Gregory Zuckerman, Simons thought equations and theorems would be the answer to the universe&#8217;s biggest mysteries.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Keep reading to learn more about Simons&#8217;s passion for mathematics.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<!--more-->\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\" id=\"h-a-love-of-mathematics\"><strong>A Love of Mathematics<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n<p>Jim Simons was born in 1938 to a middle-class Jewish family in Brookline, Massachusetts, a suburb of Boston. Intellectually curious from a young age, writes Zuckerman, Jim <strong>Simons discovered an early passion for mathematics<\/strong>. Where some find aesthetic beauty in nature or in great works of literature, Zuckerman writes that Jim Simons found beauty and elegance in mathematics. Jim Simons was inspired by the unity and connection of different fields within mathematics and the idea that formulas, equations, and theorems could be the keys that unlocked the mysteries of the observable universe. He dreamed that solving these mathematical mysteries could point the way toward discovery of deeper, universal truths.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>(Shortform note: Some mathematicians argue that <a href=\"https:\/\/www.quantamagazine.org\/how-is-math-beautiful-20200616\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">there are two forms of mathematical beauty\u2014generic and exceptional<\/a>. Generic beauty is found in the inherent order and universality of mathematics, such as the infinite extension of integers in a number line. Exceptional beauty, on the other hand, is rooted in the exceptions to or violations of those laws, which evoke a sense of mystery and deep originality. An example of exceptional mathematical beauty is the <a href=\"https:\/\/mathmonks.com\/dodecahedron\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">dodecahedron<\/a>, a solid built out of 12 pentagons and one of five perfectly symmetric solids, whose shape the ancient Greeks believed symbolized all the heavenly bodies in harmony.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>We\u2019ll explore how this adolescent passion for mathematics influenced his early career in academia, code-breaking for the US government, and financial trading.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h3 class=\"wp-block-heading\" id=\"h-an-intellectual-pursuit\"><strong>An Intellectual Pursuit<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>As a student, writes Zuckerman, Simons was interested in mathematics purely as an <a href=\"https:\/\/www.shortform.com\/blog\/intellectual-pursuits\/\">intellectual pursuit<\/a>. <\/strong>He was motivated by the challenge of solving problems, the thrill of new discoveries, and the exploration of unsolved mysteries. At this age, he had little interest in\u2014or conception of\u2014the application of mathematics to the \u201creal\u201d world or how he could harness it for personal financial gain. Although <a href=\"https:\/\/www.shortform.com\/blog\/what-is-the-difference-between-money-and-wealth\/\">money and wealth<\/a> had a certain allure to Simons as a young man, mathematics for its own sake was his abiding passion.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-table\"><table><tbody><tr><td><strong>Pure vs. Applied Mathematics<\/strong>Simons\u2019s passion for math as an intellectual pursuit speaks to a broader division within the field of mathematics\u2014that between <em>pure <\/em>mathematics and <em>applied <\/em>mathematics.<br><br><a href=\"https:\/\/college.harvard.edu\/student-life\/student-stories\/what-applied-mathematics-concentrators-perspective#:~:text=Pure%20math%20courses%20are%20heavily,within%20their%20applied%20math%20concentration.\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">Pure mathematics is focused on theory<\/a>\u2014people who engage in pure mathematics work with abstract concepts and theorems. An inquiry-based discipline, pure mathematics seeks to prove theorems or find solutions for unsolved problems, such as the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.claymath.org\/millennium-problems\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">Millennium Prize Problems<\/a> selected by the Clay Mathematics Institute (solving any one of them can earn a mathematician a $1 million prize from the Institute).<br><br>Applied mathematics, meanwhile, is about the practical <em>use <\/em>of those concepts and theorems to solve real-world problems. Applied mathematics employs these concepts in fields from science, to economics, accounting, medicine, and, as we\u2019ll see in Simons\u2019s case, investing.&nbsp;<\/td><\/tr><\/tbody><\/table><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<h3 class=\"wp-block-heading\" id=\"h-discovering-investing\"><strong>Discovering Investing<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\n<p>Zuckerman writes that Simons began to discover the exhilaration and thrill of investing in his early 20s. While completing his doctoral program at the University of California, Berkeley, he made a few preliminary trades by investing in soybean futures.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>After earning some initial profits when the price of soybeans skyrocketed, Simons\u2014ignoring a friend\u2019s advice about the volatility of commodities prices\u2014held onto his investment too long and saw his profits evaporate when soybean prices tumbled. But the experience was his first entry into the world of investing that would later define his life\u2014and make his fortune.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h3 class=\"wp-block-heading\" id=\"h-breaking-codes-at-the-ida\"><strong>Breaking Codes at the IDA<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\n<p>After completing his doctoral thesis at Berkeley in 1962 and publishing <a href=\"https:\/\/www.jstor.org\/stable\/1970556\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">his first mathematical paper<\/a> that year, <strong>Simons took a job as a codebreaker with the Institute for Defense Analyses (IDA)<\/strong>, a nonprofit research organization with close ties to the United States government.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Working there from 1964 through 1968, at the height of the Cold War between the United States and the Soviet Union, Simons\u2019s job was to sift through reams of coded Soviet messages and signals to identify patterns. Once Simons and his intelligence analyst colleagues could <em>identify <\/em>the Soviet patterns of communication, they could unlock the <em>meaning <\/em>of those communications and gain crucial intelligence on Soviet actions\u2014such as where they might be moving troops, diplomatic personnel, or military hardware.&nbsp;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Where did Jim Simons&#8217;s love for mathematics come from? How did he turn his childhood passion into a groundbreaking career? For Jim Simons, mathematics is everything. According to The Man Who Solved the Market by Gregory Zuckerman, Simons thought equations and theorems would be the answer to the universe&#8217;s biggest mysteries. Keep reading to learn more about Simons&#8217;s passion for mathematics.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":14,"featured_media":109606,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[81,31,33],"tags":[1112],"class_list":["post-109334","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-economics","category-money","category-people","tag-the-man-who-solved-the-market","","tg-column-two"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO Premium plugin v24.3 (Yoast SEO v24.3) - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Jim Simons and Mathematics: A Passion-Turned-Career - Shortform Books<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Jim Simons and mathematics go way back. 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