Flatiron Institute researchers don’t have to teach, and they don’t have to apply for grants, which can consume much of an academic’s time. Nearly all the institute’s senior hires come from universities, and most of these universities are nearby, leading to some resentment. “People feel we have so many resources that we’re going to take over the world,” Spergel said. In an e-mail, one competitor complained to Spergel that the Flatiron was “a 1000 pound gorilla,” adding that, of the people he had recently been trying to recruit, all of them had “an offer from you.” Another researcher pointed out that, as powerful as computational science has become, it still relies on the kind of experimental science that the institute does not fund. In an e-mail, the researcher noted, “The predictions from the computation can only ever be as good as the data that has been generated. (I think!)”

Simons’s willingness to pay more than the most élite academic institutions makes many people uncomfortable. Ray Madoff, who runs the Boston College Law School Forum on Philanthropy and the Public Good, said, “It shows what a lot of people suspected, which is that the wealthy play by their own rules. The rich are running things, and we’re just visiting their world.” It wasn’t so long ago that private foundations could be established only by an act of Congress, in part because they were considered so inimical to democracy. In 1913, Congress refused John D. Rockefeller’s request to establish his foundation. He had to go to the New York State Legislature for a charter instead.

Uros Seljak, who directs U.C. Berkeley’s department of astronomy and physics, warned that private foundations can be capricious. “Yes, sure, they have a lot of money and they can put in a lot of money, but they can also take it away and put it somewhere else.” Tom Insel, who led the National Institute of Mental Health for more than a decade, expressed a different worry. “My concern is that the generosity of Jim Simons will let the rest of us off the hook,” he said. “Will we decide that science can be supported as a private endeavor, and forfeit our commitment to use taxpayer dollars for science? Will we forget that science is an investment, not a cost?”

The Simons Foundation has channelled hundreds of millions of dollars into autism research—seventy-five million dollars this year alone. It is no coincidence that the Simonses have a family member who is on the spectrum. And, despite the importance of the research, is it not possible that these millions would be better spent on a different syndrome, either because it affects even more people or because it might be more readily solved? Simons does not think so. He trusts his taste. “We’ve really transformed that field,” he said. Some of the work he has funded, he noted, “has employed a very mathematical approach to finding new genes.”

One afternoon this fall, the heads of the institute’s three divisions sat with Simons at a conference table near his office. All the participants were bald men with glasses, and the conversation was fast, lightly mocking, and remarkably well informed. You felt as though you were in the presence of exceptional minds. Simons looked in his element: he might have been back at Stony Brook or Renaissance.

The men had gathered, in part, to discuss adding a fourth division. Simons asked his lieutenants for suggestions. Spergel suggested computational epidemiology and public health. But was the field, Greengard asked, truly “Flatiron-ready”? Spergel countered that it was an area in which “some smart people could really have an impact.” Simons stepped in to say that, if they couldn’t find someone great to “honcho” a workshop on the topic, they should let it drop for now.

A second prospect was computational neuroscience. A prominent N.Y.U. researcher was already scheduled to make a presentation at the institute in the winter, but Simons was doubtful. “Neuroscience is this huge field,” he said. “I don’t know if we can make an important dent in it or not. ‘How the brain works’ is arguably right up there with ‘How is the universe formed?’ as a difficult problem.” This, too, was put aside.

Next came the geosciences. Simons lit up. He liked the complexity of the problems that needed to be solved. The institute could field-test the idea with a workshop, and it could include atmospheric science and ocean science, so that there was a connection to climate-change research. “My guess is there’s room to do good work there,” he said. The others cautioned that thousands of researchers were already working on climate change. Simons pushed back: “Well, if you added one person who was a real atmospheric guy, eh, that wouldn’t hurt.” The others assented. Simons was pleased, if unsurprised, to have got his way. For all his affability, he casts the deciding vote.

On November 3rd, a “bio-geoscientist” from Caltech, John Grotzinger, came to talk to the Simonses, two of the three division heads, the computing chiefs, and a few others. He commented on the difficulty that academia has in getting new telescopes built. “It’s not just Caltech,” he said. “It’s everyone.”

Simons mentioned the telescope that he had helped fund in Chile; it will cost him about forty million dollars. “We’re putting up this big observatory in the Atacama Desert—it’s going to be beautiful,” he said. “We’re going to study the cosmic microwave background.”

“Wow,” Grotzinger said.

Grotzinger, who was advising, not seeking a job, elegantly guided the group through the challenges of climate modelling. Many of the problems were familiar to the Flatiron staff. “Most of the data actually gets ignored,” Grotzinger explained. And there was a problem of collaboration. He was a specialist in historical climate change—specifically, what had caused the great Permian extinction, during which virtually all species died. To properly assess this cataclysm, you had to understand both the rock record and the ocean’s composition, but, Grotzinger said, “geologists don’t have a history of interacting with physical oceanographers.” He talked about how his best collaboration had resulted from having had lunch with an oceanographer, and how rare this was. Climate modelling, he said, was an intrinsically difficult problem made worse by the structural divisions of academia. “They will grope their way to a solution probably in the next fifty years,” Grotzinger said. “But, if you had it all under one umbrella, I think it could result in a major breakthrough.”

Simons and his team were interested. It seemed Flatiron-ready. The scientists asked Grotzinger how many fellows, and how much computing power, such a group would need. Grotzinger estimated that a division would need at least fifty researchers to be effective.

“I would include some programmers,” Simons chimed in.

After the meeting, Simons said that he hopes to have his fourth division in place by next September. I asked him: Why stop there? Why not eight units? Why not Simons University? He had the money, after all. But he insisted that four divisions was all he could handle, if he wanted both first-class work and a collaborative atmosphere. He added that he needed to manage it all, with his “light touch.”

Simons understood that, whatever structure he set up, it ultimately needed to function well without his supervision. The foundation had signed a thirty-five-year lease on the institute’s building, with an option to renew for fifteen more. As long as the tax laws didn’t change dramatically, Simons’s fortune could keep the institute going in perpetuity. But humans, he realized, were not machines. “I’m hoping this is going to last a hundred years,” he told me. “But I won’t see it.” ♦