Jim Simons, the wealthy pioneer of quantitative investing who produced staggering returns, passes away at the age of 86

Jim Simons, a mathematician who established the most prosperous quantitative hedge fund in history, passed suddenly in New York City on Friday, according to a statement from his organization on its website. At Renaissance Technologies, Simons pioneered the use of mathematical models and computers to make investment decisions, leaving a record that equaled that of industry titans like Warren Buffett and George Soros. According to Gregory Zuckerman's book "The Man Who Solved the Market," his flagship Medallion Fund saw yearly returns of 66% from 1988 to 2018. He served as a codebreaker for American intelligence during the Vietnam War, keeping an eye on the Soviet Union and breaking through Russian code. Simons graduated from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1958 with a bachelor's degree in mathematics and his doctorate in  mathematics from the University of California, Berkeley at the age of 23. The quant guru founded what became Renaissance in 1978 at the age of 40