James H. Simons keeps putting his money where his mind is.
The billionaire former mathematics professor and his wife, Marilyn Hawrys Simons, have given $60 million more to Stony Brook University.
The donation to the university where Simons once headed the mathematics department goes toward the Simons Center for Geometry and Physics on the school’s main Long Island campus.
Announced Wednesday, the gift is the largest ever to any public college or university in New York state.
“The new center will give many of the world’s best mathematicians and physicists the opportunity to work and interact in an environment and an architecture carefully designed to enhance progress,” Simons said at Stony Brook.
Simons, who gave $25 million to Stony Brook in 2006, is the founder and president of Renaissance Technologies. The fund is known for its use of quantitative principles and mathematical models. His earnings in 2006 totaled $1.7 billion, more than any other hedge manager.
As of September 2007, Simons had a net personal worth of $5.5 billion, according to Forbes magazine.
A graduate of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Simons, 69, received his doctorate in mathematics at age 23 from the University of California at Berkeley. He then taught at Harvard University and MIT.
In 1964, he went to the Institute for Defense Analyses, where he worked as a code-breaker.
During his time at Stony Brook from 1968 to 1976, Simons helped make the school’s math department one of the best in the country. He also established his own reputation as a world-class mathematician.
He left the school to devote his attention to investing, starting Renaissance Technologies in 1982.
Simons and his wife, who has an undergraduate degree and a doctorate in economics from Stony Brook, are the founders of The Simons Foundation. As of June 2006, it had $477 million in assets.
Marilyn Simons serves as president of the foundation, which directs the bulk of its donations toward the mathematics and science.
Some of the $33 million it gave between 2005 and 2006 funded autism research.
The foundation also supported Math for America, which Simons founded in 2004 with a $25 million commitment. The organization’s goal is to support and train teachers.
James and Marilyn Simons also founded the Nick Simons Institute in memory of their son. He worked in Nepal in 2002 before drowning at age 23 in Indonesia in 2003. The institute’s goal is to improve health care in Nepal.
Simons also funded the Avalon Park & Preserve on Long Island in memory of his son Paul who died at age 34 in 1996 when the bicycle he was riding was hit by a car.
The latest gift to Stony Book comes at a time when New York Gov. Eliot Spitzer is trying to raise the reputation of New York’s public universities and colleges.
Stony Brook opened its doors in 1957 and has an enrollment of 23,346, the highest in the institution’s history.
The school is currently in the midst of $300 million capital campaign. With the Simons gift, $260 million has been raised so far.
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