Stony Brook University to Receive Rare $500M Gift from Former Math Professor

By: Hellen Zaboulani

Stony Brook University, one of the State University of New York system’s two flagship institutions, is joining a rare group of colleges gifted $500 million or more.

As reported by the NY Times, the public school on Long Island received a donation on Thursday of $500 million from a foundation formed by a former faculty member at the University and an alumnus.  The donation marks one of the largest gifts ever made to a university in American history, and is especially rare for a public university.  The donation will also trigger another $200 million influx of public funds into the school, thanks to a donation matching program passed in April as part of the New York State budget. The funds will go toward the school’s endowment.

Per the Times, the $500 million donation was made by the Simons Foundation, which was founded in 1994 by Jim Simons.  He was a former Stony Brook math professor, who later made billions as a hedge fund manager.  His wife, Marilyn Simons, has her own ties to the school, having received her bachelor’s degree and doctorate at Stony Brook.  Mr. and Mrs. Simons have made other significant contributions to Stony Brook in the past—which in all, together with Thursday’s pledge, amount to about $1.2 billion, Ms. McInnis said. She added that Mr. Simons had joined the school’s faculty in 1968, just five years after it was first opened.

The University said it hopes the donation will also spur other large gifts over the next three years, so that it can qualify for the maximum amount of state matching funds.  The donation together with the state matching funds will be double the amount of Stony Brook’s current endowment (which is $370 million), the university president, Maurie McInnis said.  Stony Brook will receive the $500 million donation over the course of seven years, and it will be much needed to help students afford the rising costs of attending university.  “Investing in our students is one of the ways that we might expend this money in the future,” McInnis said.

Per the NY Times, in an interview last week, Mr. and Mrs. Simons said the state’s new endowment matching program is what convinced them to make the large donation at this time. They said the gift was an opportunity to express their gratitude to the university, which Mrs. Simons said “was transformative in my life.”  Having been raised in a working-class household, she said she hoped the gift would help people from “underserved communities” to thrive at the school.

Mr. Simons, now 85, is the founder of a quantitative hedge fund company known as Renaissance Technologies.  He has appeared numerous times on Forbes ranking of the world’s wealthiest people, and boasts an estimated net worth of $28.1 billion in 2023.  He said he formulated the Chern-Simons form, one of his most widely-cited mathematical innovations, while teaching at Stony Brook.  That innovation, which he said was “probably my best idea,” has been used by physicists to further develop the quantum field theory. He also met his wife during his time at the school.