The Renaissance men

Renaissance Technologies is a hedge fund firm headquartered in Long Island, N.Y., with additional offices in New York City and London. The firm, which uses complex mathematical theories and statistical methods in its investment decisions and strategies, has approximately $15 billion in assets under management and employs 275 people. Renaissance was founded in 1982 by James Simons, a former Cold War code breaker and MIT and Harvard math professor who now serves as the firm's non-executive chairman (he retired as chairman of the firm in 2010). Renaissance is currently led by co-CEOs Peter Brown and Robert Mercer -- who previously worked together at IBM and even shared an apartment in New York City when they started at IBM. Brown has a PhD in computer science from Carnegie Mellon University, and Mercer has a PhD in computer science from the University of Illinois. According to The Wall Street Journal, Brown is politically liberal and has been known to ride a unicycle around the office, while Mercer is politically conservative and keeps a model toy train in his basement.