Stony Brook gets $60M gift of gratitude

The president of one of the world's most successful hedge fund firms and his wife, both of whom have deep ties to Stony Brook University, are donating $60 million to the school - the largest individual gift to any SUNY institution, officials said yesterday during a news conference at Stony Brook's Manhattan campus.

The donation from billionaire Jim Simons, founder and president of East Setauket-based Renaissance Technologies LLC, and his wife, Marilyn, will establish the Simons Center for Geometry and Physics on Stony Brook's main campus. Simons said the two disciplines are "at the heart of understanding the universe, its origins, its basic nature."

About $20 million will cover construction costs, Simon said in an interview. The Perkins Eastman architecture firm in Manhattan already has been retained, and a rendering of the building was unveiled yesterday. Groundbreaking is expected soon, and Simons said he hopes construction will be completed by 2010.

The remaining $40 million will fund the center's endowment, which will be used to recruit faculty, provide training and support for graduate students, and bring in 30 visiting scholars every year, Simons said. He added the university was "pitching in" by funding basic salaries of the seven faculty members planned for the center.

Recruitment is already under way. The university announced that "internationally renowned string theorist" Michael R. Douglas - a native of Stony Brook, professor at Rutgers University and director of the New High Energy Center - will join Stony Brook this summer.

Gov. Eliot Spitzer, who attended the news conference, and Stony Brook President Shirley Strum Kenny praised the Simons' generosity; they now have given $85 million to the university.

Kenny said the gift was "thrilling," coming in the university's 50th anniversary year. Spitzer, who has proposed a $4 billion state endowment for higher education, said support of higher ed was a "moral imperative."

Simons said Stony Brook rescued him 40 years ago by hiring him as math department chair after he had been fired from another job for protesting the Vietnam War. His wife, a Bay Shore native, grew emotional describing the benefits she derived from Stony Brook, where she received her undergraduate and doctoral degrees. She said family members who were bricklayers worked on university construction projects.

"But going to Stony Brook changed my life in so many ways," Marilyn Simons said, near tears. "I met my wonderful husband and I got a wonderful education that opened the world to me. So, I'm really pleased to be standing here today, to be able to give back to the university that's given me so much."

Big givers

Top gifts to SUNY institutions:

1. Jim and Marilyn Simons: $60 million to Stony Brook University, announced yesterday

2. Charles B. Wang: $52 million to Stony Brook University for the Charles B. Wang Center, an Asian and American cultural center, in 2002

3. Jim and Marilyn Simons: $25 million gift to Stony Brook in 2006

4. B. Thomas Golisano: $6 million to SUNY Upstate Medical University's Central New York Children's Hospital in 2005

5. Norman E. Snyder Jr.: $5 million to the University at Albany's School of Business in 2005

City University of New York

1. William E. Macaulay: $30 million, the largest donation in CUNY history, in 2006 for the purchase of a building to be the permanent home of the CUNY Honors College, and to add support to its endowment