On Jul. 7, 2014, Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory (CSHL) announced a $50 million gift from Jim and Marilyn Simons to establish the Simons Center for Quantitative Biology.

Jim Simons was a MIT mathematician, founder of Renaissance Technologies, a private hedge fund investment company based in New York, and philanthropist, who with his wife Marilyn estanlished the Simons Foundation in 1994 to advance the frontiers of research in mathematics and the basic sciences.