AUD-20250713-WA0006

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[Speaker 3] (0:10 - 1:40)
I'm Mark Kastner, I'm the Dean of the School of Science, and I'm only going to say a couple
of words. I began this series of talks last year because I realized that we have a number of
people who are graduates of MIT very often, who have accomplished really unusual things
in their careers. And in our classes, we talk about the heroes in our field, whether it's physics
or mathematics or biology, who've done great things academically, but we rarely talk about
those heroes who've changed the world in other ways.

And so this colloquium series is to let the community see how much you can do with a
science education. So my job is to introduce the introducer, and the introducer is Iz Singer.
Iz Singer is an institute professor, one of our greatest mathematicians.

He has won so many prizes that if I listed them, that would take up all of everybody's time.
But I will mention the National Medal of Science and the Abel Prize, which is the Nobel Prize
of Mathematics. One of our true heroes, Iz, is going to introduce our speaker.

[Speaker 1] (1:59 - 10:59)

That S in careers should be capitalized to emphasize the number of things that Jim has done.
The amazing accomplishments of Jim. I, in this talk, am going to focus on Jim in mathematics
and a little bit of me mixed in, because in some ways Jim was my teacher, in other ways I
was Jim's teacher.

Jim was 17 when he entered MIT as a freshman in 1955. He was a brilliant math student,
graduating in three years, and during those three years took graduate courses. He stayed for
an additional year at MIT in which he took two reading courses, one for me on Lie groups
and Lie algebras that turned out to be very useful.

People ask me what Jim was like as an undergraduate. I quote from a 2008 article, The
Codebreakers, at MIT, Simons worked hard and played hard, mostly late night poker. All the
years that I've seen Jim in the Cambridge area, poker was a passion, and I think poker
remains a passion with Jim.

Jim went to UC Berkeley as a graduate student, and in Duke course, Professor Burt Costin
became his thesis advisor. Burt moved to MIT later, and in fact is a Professor Emeritus from
MIT as of 93. There's Burt right there.

For his thesis, Jim was trying to simplify the derivation of a special list of Lie groups. That list
had been derived from geometry by Berset in Paris in a very complicated way, and Jim felt
because the answer was so simple, I won't describe it because that's very technical, there
should be a simple way of getting that list of special Lie groups. He learned that I was
similarly motivated, and so he sent me a note asking whether we could meet at Christmas
time when he was coming back to see his parents.

It was a memorable occasion because we had an enormous blizzard at MIT the day we were
supposed to meet, a blizzard that most of you know. You could barely walk, much less drive,
but the two of us did show up in my office and spent the afternoon talking about the
problem, that really there should be a more direct solution and ways that one might attack
it. Jim went back to Berkeley and in three months' time solved the problem, and that
solution became his thesis.

He then came to MIT, spent a year as an instructor at MIT, in which he wrote up that thesis,
prepared it for publication, and it was sent to the prestigious Annals of Mathematics, and it
was accepted as a paper for the Annals. As a joke, at that time we decided that Jim was my
honorary student and I was Jim's honorary teacher. Actually, Jim taught me a lot over a
period of time.

First, in the 70s, he told me and showed me that gauge theories in physics was the same as
connections on fiber bundles in mathematics, the bread and butter of geometry. Moreover,
he showed me the famous dictionary that connected the technical terms in gauge theory
with those in geometry, and that's where I first got interested in quantum field theory,
particularly in terms of gauge theories. Many years later, Jim showed me Geer Simon's
invariance, very important in geometry.

In fact, an elegant extension of Chern characteristic classes. An important development in

geometry, and was perhaps much more striking, or as striking I should say, was the fact that
it turned out to be very important in what we call topological quantum field theory. So all
the physicists were quite excited about that development of Chern-Simons and have been
using Chern-Simons ever since.

At any rate, he taught me that, but we felt as a joke that he was my honorary student and
he could call me for advice, and as his honorary teacher, I would give it. Jim systematically
ignored my advice, and with positive results, but as a result, I claimed some responsibility
for his successes. A case in point was his call from the Institute for Defense Analysis in 1968.

Should he accept an offer from Stony Brook, the State University of Stony Brook, as chair of
the department? My response was, as a faculty member doing research and teaching, great.
As chair of the department, doing all that kind of administrative work, absolutely no.

Of course, Jim ignored my advice, and what was the effect? Jim came to Stony Brook as
chair. He built up the department terrifically, particularly in differential geometry.

He completed some work he was doing at the Institute for, research work he was doing,
some very special work, doing at the Institute for Defense Analysis that led to his winning
the Veblen Prize in 1975. Jim left the math department in 76 after being stuck on a math
problem for a long period involving term assignments. He turned to other interests and
finally founded Renaissance Technology.

I know nothing about hedge funds, and I'm going to leave that problem of Renaissance
Technology to Jim, but I can say this, having visited their offices often enough, it's the best
math physics department in the world. Jim retired recently, and I'm happy to report that
finally he's following my advice. He's now back doing research in mathematics and very
interesting research at that.

I was going to stop there, but I'm compelled to mention the Simons Foundation run by Jim
and his wife, Marilyn. In my view, the foundation is very generous and very astute in what it
supports. I mentioned a few things, autism in research, Math for America, the new Simons
Center for Geometry Physics and its beautiful new building, and finally the terrific support
for math and physics everywhere.

In particular, our math department at MIT has gotten an enormous amount of support from
the Simons Foundation. I leave it at that. I'm very happy to introduce you to my very good
friend, my teacher, and my student, Jim Simons.

[Speaker 2] (11:15 - 15:34)

Well, that was a heck of an introduction, for which I think is because I was worried that my
talk would be too long. And Izz just gave about half of it. So I can concentrate on the second
half and fit the whole thing in in the time allotted.

Well, actually, it's a great pleasure to be here. I've been in this room before, I believe. It
looks familiar.

But everything else about the Institute has changed a great deal. I always wanted to come
here. I lived in the area and I wanted to come here and study mathematics when I was a kid.

And I'll tell you about an amusing bump on the road. So when I was 14, I had a job in
Christmastime in Breck's Garden Supply Place. I don't know if it's still here or not.

Anyway, I worked in the basement in the stockroom putting away stock. That was my job.
And I was terrible at it.

I couldn't remember where the hell anything went. And there seemed to be no system. And
they were not pleased with my work and demoted me, if you can imagine a demotion from
that level.

But I was demoted to floor sweeper, which I loved because it was easy. I took no brain work
and I could think. And I liked to walk and think.

And what was nicer than that? And you get paid for it in the push-up room. Anyway,
Christmas came and the season was over and this basement area was run by two men and a
woman.

They had the job of the stockroom. And so in the course of saying goodbye to me, they tried
to be nice and said, well, what's your future plans? And I said, well, I want to study
mathematics and go to MIT.

Well, they thought that was the funniest thing they had ever heard. The guy who couldn't
remember where to put the sheet manure, he's going to be a mathematician at MIT. Well, I
fooled them.

I applied to MIT and I was accepted. But then I got this call. I got a call from Wesleyan
University.

I'd never heard of Wesleyan University. I was a high school student. I didn't know
everything.
And they said, well, we've heard about you. We'd really like you to apply to Wesleyan. So I
made a few inquiries.

It sounded nice. I said, okay. And they said, come down for the weekend.

We'll do this for you and that and go to a class. I don't know. I must have come down on a
Friday.

Whatever it was, I had a lovely time at Wesleyan. It was a beautiful place. And I was swept
off my feet by their interest and the prettiness of the place.

So I applied to Wesleyan and I was rejected. So there was no choice. I was destined for this
place.

So anyway, I did come and I did study mathematics. And it went all right. And one of the
clinchers for a career in mathematics occurred when I first saw.

Now, there was a professor named Warren Ambrose who was a very inspiring
mathematician. Some of the older folks here probably remember Ambrose. Singer I didn't
know at that time.

But there was a joint called Jack and Marion's, which was at Coolidge Corner. And I've
learned it disappeared in 1971. But this was 1956 or 57.

And it was open until 3 in the morning. And we used to go there sometimes late at night to
get a sandwich, I and my friends. And one night I saw Ambrose come in.

This was midnight, 1 in the morning. And this other older fellow, Singer, I later discovered.
And he must have been in his 30s by then.

And Ambrose was maybe 50. Anyway, they came in, sort of dressed like kids, sat down at a
table.
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