Hedge Fund-er tops Long Island’s Rich List. Guess who?

Ask his friends, and they'll tell you that James Simons, manager of a hedge fund based in East Setauket, is a private guy. He's been called the richest Long Islander, and not a lot of people know who he is.

At an estimated $2.6 billion, James Simons' net worth is greater than Cablevision's Charles Dolan. A few times more than Computer Associates founder and Islanders owner Charles Wang. Other Long Islanders you'd consider? Not even close.

In fact, Simons is one of only three Long Islanders on Forbes Magazine's annual list of the world's richest people, and he's No. 278 (Dolan is 355 and Home Depot co-founder Kenneth Langone is 548).

In May, the 68-year-old former math chairman at Stony Brook University gave the college $25 million to improve studies in math and physics, one of the largest gifts in its history. He also was named by the Bush administration to the National Mathematics Advisory Panel to suggest ways to improve the teaching of math.

In January he raised $13 million to keep a major nuclear physics experiment running at Brookhaven National Laboratory after it lost some of its government funding. And last year, Math for America, a foundation overseen by Simons, provided $25 million to recruit and train 180 math teachers over the next four years in the New York City public schools.

Simons' public call to improve America's math and science training seems a distinct departure for him after three decades of quietly building up a fortune in the mostly unregulated world of hedge fund investing.

http://www.newsday.com/business/ny-bzsimons0705,0,3996439.story?coll=ny-homepage-mezz