Why No One Knows The 14 th Richest Person In The World

When I was advising a Canadian quant fund seeking to grow its assets under management (aum), word came out that a competitor -- Renaissance Technologies -- had stopped taking money from outside investors. 

This is the greatest sign of success a hedge fund or similar investment firm can ever signal. What it really means is that the fund managers are so supremely confident of their ability to make money, that they no longer want to make it for others. 

From the moment that it put a halt on investor contributions, Renaissance would be playing with its own money exclusively, assuming all of the risk that goes with that in the belief and the conviction that it would reap all of the rewards. 

Few -- outside of high-end financial circles -- have ever heard of Renaissance. Even though it is likely the most successful hedge fund ever to be created. 

But even more astounding is that even fewer have any knowledge of the genius who founded and ran built Renaissance for years, one James Harris Simons. 

Ranked by Forbes as the 24th wealthiest person in the world, Simons is reputed to have built a fortune of $18 billion, but may well have far more. 

And still, we haven't peeled back the onion who James Simons is. For while virtually every great captain of industry is superb at one thing, Simons is a world-class master of two. 

Specifically, he is the greatest living algebraist, having created with a colleague a mathematical theory so vast in its import and impact that is now essential not only to mathematicians but to string theory (and thus to physicists).

When I referred to Simons as a "genius," I wasn't engaging in hyperbole. The prodigy who was recruited by the US government to serve as a decoder during the Vietnam war, who graduated from MIT and Berkeley, who built Stony Brook's math department into an academic powerhouse and who created Renaissance and the Chern-Simons theory, is the same Simons The Financial Times has declared "the world's smartest billionaire."

While the other "genius" entrepreneurs -- the likes of Bezos and Elon Musk are household names -- Simons (who steers clear of the limelight) is the national treasure know one knows. 

For me, it brings back memories.

Although things have certainly changed with Bill Gates, when I went to Redmond to visit with Bill in 1990, everyone I told of my meeting with Gates asked the same question:

"Who's that?"

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