Simons Foundation — private funder of basic science and mathematics

The Simons Foundation is a New York City-based private charitable organization, founded in 1994 by mathematician and investor Jim Simons and his wife Marilyn Simons, with the stated mission of advancing research in mathematics and the basic sciences through grants, direct research, and public engagement. Operating as a 501(c)(3) organization, it has grown from a family philanthropy into one of the largest private funders of fundamental science in the United States, with total assets reaching $4.5 billion in 2024. Its programs span pure mathematics, theoretical physics, computational science, neuroscience, autism research, and science communication, and its staff of more than 500 people, roughly half of them scientists, work across its New York headquarters and the Flatiron Institute. The foundation’s single largest act of giving, a $500 million unrestricted endowment gift to Stony Brook University announced in June 2023, was at the time of its announcement the largest such gift to any higher education institution in American history.

Key facts

Country: United States
Founded: 1994
Headquarters: New York City
Founder: Jim Simons
Type: charitable organization; 501(c)(3) organization
Website: https://www.simonsfoundation.org/

Origins and Governance

Jim and Marilyn Simons established the foundation in 1994. Marilyn Simons served as founding president from 1994 to 2021, and from 2021 onward she has served as chair of the board of trustees, with cosmologist David Spergel appointed president. The foundation is governed by its board of trustees and operates as a private foundation under U.S. tax law.

Jim Simons described his professional life as falling into three successive phases: mathematician, investor, and philanthropist. His mathematical work, carried out largely at Stony Brook University, is foundational to fields including string theory, topology, and condensed matter physics. He remained active in the foundation’s work until his death on May 10, 2024, in New York City, at the age of 86.

The foundation’s formal programmatic structure developed over time. Its Mathematics and Physical Sciences division was established in 2009, when mathematician David Eisenbud was hired to build and lead it. Grant-making now runs across four program areas: Mathematics and Physical Sciences, Life Sciences, Autism and Neuroscience (which includes the SFARI initiative), and Science, Society and Culture.

The Flatiron Institute

The Flatiron Institute is the foundation’s internal research organization, housing five centers for computational science: the Center for Computational Astrophysics, the Center for Computational Biology, the Center for Computational Quantum Physics, the Center for Computational Mathematics, and the Center for Computational Neuroscience. It occupies the 11-story Beaux Arts building at 162 Fifth Avenue, constructed in 1903, in New York’s Flatiron District.

The institute was preceded by the Simons Center for Data Analysis, inaugurated in 2013 with a focus on computational biology. The broader idea of a foundation-run computational research institute grew out of a 2012 gathering at Buttermilk Falls Inn in upstate New York, where mathematician Ingrid Daubechies of Duke University proposed building an internal institute to develop mathematical tools for large scientific datasets, rather than establishing an external university center.

The foundation purchased the office portion of its headquarters building at 160 Fifth Avenue in 2018 for $180.75 million, acquiring approximately 122,000 square feet spanning the second through ninth floors of that nine-story neo-Renaissance structure, built in 1892. Plans have been proposed to connect the two Fifth Avenue buildings with a $40 million glass pedestrian skybridge designed by Perkins Eastman.

Grant Programs and Major Awards

Between 2020 and 2024 the foundation distributed between $272 million and $310 million annually in grants. Programs in Mathematics and Physical Sciences include Targeted Grants, which support high-risk theoretical work in mathematics, physics, and computer science for up to five years, and Targeted Grants to Institutes, which provide multiyear infrastructure support to established mathematical and physical sciences institutes globally. In 2026, nine institutes received Targeted Grants to Institutes.

In 2012 the foundation awarded a $60 million grant to the University of California, Berkeley, to establish the Simons Institute for the Theory of Computing. Berkeley was the only public university among the finalists for that grant. The Simons Center for Geometry and Physics at Stony Brook University was founded in 2008 with a gift from Jim and Marilyn Simons and moved to its own dedicated building in 2011, that building designed to connect physically to the university’s Mathematics Tower.

In June 2023, the foundation announced a $500 million unrestricted endowment gift to Stony Brook University, to be delivered in installments over seven years. At the time, Stony Brook’s entire existing endowment stood at $370 million, making the gift larger than the university’s whole prior endowment base. Jim and Marilyn Simons’ first gift to Stony Brook, made in 1983, had been $750; by 2023 their combined giving to the university, including the $500 million gift, totaled more than $1.2 billion.

In June 2024 the foundation announced the Simons Dissertation Fellowship in Mathematics, created to honor Jim Simons. The fellowship provides up to 40 awards per year, each supplying $30,000 in general research support for the student and $2,000 for the student’s department, covering the fourth and fifth years of a Ph.D. program. The inaugural class of fellows was announced in July 2025.

In November 2022 the foundation committed $250 million over ten years to fund new neuroscience collaborations, with a stated interest in research that other funding organizations consider too risky to support.

Neuroscience and Autism Research

The Simons Foundation Autism Research Initiative, known as SFARI, sits within the Autism and Neuroscience program area and represents one of the foundation’s longest-running commitments. Separately, the foundation launched the Simons Collaboration on the Global Brain (SCGB) on July 1, 2014, as its first major collaborative neuroscience effort. The SCGB studied how populations of neurons give rise to cognition and concluded its last year of funded research in 2025.

The collaboration’s name came from Jim Simons himself, who suggested that studying populations of neurons, rather than individual neurons, could be called ‘the global brain.’ The term shaped the collaboration’s identity from its 2014 launch through its funded period.

The foundation’s Shenoy Undergraduate Research Fellowship in Neuroscience (SURFiN), organized by the Autism and Neuroscience Division, is named in honor of neuroscientist Krishna Shenoy. The fellowship provides paid in-person laboratory research experiences to undergraduate students who have not previously had access to research opportunities, paying fellows $25 per hour for 10 hours a week over 30 weeks.

The Simons Observatory

In 2016 the Simons Foundation co-funded, together with the Heising-Simons Foundation, a five-year, $40 million grant to establish the Simons Observatory, a suite of millimeter-wavelength telescopes designed to study cosmic microwave background radiation. The observatory sits at an elevation of approximately 17,000 feet near the summit of Cerro Toco in northern Chile’s Atacama Desert.

The observatory officially began its observation phase in May 2024. Its Large Aperture Telescope achieved first light in February 2025, and by October 2026 the facility was fully online and conducting science operations.

Education and Public Engagement

Quanta Magazine, an editorially independent online publication, was launched by the foundation in 2012 under the name Simons Science News before being rebranded as Quanta Magazine in 2013. It covers developments in mathematics, theoretical physics, theoretical computer science, and the basic life sciences.

The foundation funds Math for America, a nonprofit founded in 2004 by Jim Simons that supports more than 1,000 New York City secondary school STEM teachers through four-year renewable fellowships. That figure represents approximately 10 percent of the city’s entire STEM teaching force.

Sandbox Films, the foundation’s nonprofit documentary film production company, was launched in 2020. Werner Herzog served as one of its founding advisors, alongside musician David Byrne and producer Effie Brown. Herzog co-directed the company’s first release, Fireball: Visitors From Darker Worlds, with Cambridge volcanologist Clive Oppenheimer.

Artificial Intelligence and Emerging Initiatives

In 2026, the Simons Foundation committed $75 million to the Empire AI consortium, a New York State public-benefit artificial intelligence initiative. The funding supports the participation of the City University of New York and the Flatiron Institute. The foundation’s computing resources committed during the consortium’s first phase, called Alpha, supported more than 130 research projects and hundreds of researchers across New York before the Beta phase came online in 2026.

The Simons Center for Geometry and Physics at Stony Brook University traces part of its intellectual origin to a seminar Jim Simons taught on differential geometry to physicists at the request of Nobel Prize-winning physicist C.N. Yang. From that exchange between mathematics and physics, Simons and mathematician S.S. Chern co-developed the Chern-Simons form, which is now foundational in string theory and topological quantum field theory.

Did you know

The $500 million unrestricted gift the Simons Foundation made to Stony Brook University in June 2023 exceeded Stony Brook’s entire existing endowment of $370 million at the time of the announcement. (sbstatesman.com)
Jim and Marilyn Simons’ first gift to Stony Brook University, made in 1983, was $750. By 2023, their combined giving to the university, including the $500 million gift, had surpassed $1.2 billion. (news.stonybrook.edu)
The concept for the Flatiron Institute originated at a 2012 gathering at Buttermilk Falls Inn in upstate New York, where mathematician Ingrid Daubechies of Duke University proposed building an internal institute focused on mathematical tools for large scientific datasets, rather than creating a new external university body. (simonsfoundation.org)
Jim Simons described his career as three consecutive phases: mathematician, investor, and philanthropist. His mathematical work at Stony Brook University is now foundational to string theory, topology, and condensed matter physics. (simonsfoundation.org)
The computing resources the Simons Foundation committed during the Empire AI consortium’s first phase (Alpha) supported more than 130 research projects and hundreds of researchers across New York State before the Beta phase came online in 2026. (governor.ny.gov)
Sandbox Films, the foundation’s nonprofit film company launched in 2020, counted Werner Herzog among its founding advisors alongside musician David Byrne and producer Effie Brown. Herzog co-directed the company’s first release, Fireball: Visitors From Darker Worlds, with Cambridge volcanologist Clive Oppenheimer. (realscreen.com)
The name ‘the global brain’ for the Simons Collaboration on the Global Brain came from Jim Simons himself, who suggested using it to describe the study of how populations of neurons, rather than individual neurons, give rise to cognition. The term defined the collaboration from its July 2014 launch through its last year of funded research in 2025. (simonsfoundation.org)
The Simons Foundation paid $180.75 million for the office portion of its headquarters building at 160 Fifth Avenue in 2018, more than five times the $34.26 million that the previous owner, RFR Holdings, had paid for the entire building in 2005, just 13 years earlier. (therealdeal.com)
The Simons Center for Geometry and Physics at Stony Brook University has roots in a seminar Jim Simons taught on differential geometry at the request of Nobel Prize-winning physicist C.N. Yang. That exchange led Simons and mathematician S.S. Chern to co-develop the Chern-Simons form, now foundational in string theory and topological quantum field theory. (annualreports.simonsfoundation.org)

Data sources

Data updated: 2026-10-28