Business
George Soros
Investor and philanthropist
Born 1930
Photo: Aris Oikonomou - European Commission · CC BY 4.0
«The financial markets generally are unpredictable. So that one has to have different scenarios.»
George Soros survived the Nazi occupation of Hungary as a child, built one of the most successful hedge funds in history, and has given away more than thirty billion dollars through his Open Society Foundations. He is a political target in several countries as a result.
Key achievements
- Made a billion dollars shorting the pound on Black Wednesday, 1992
- Founded Open Society Foundations, giving away over $30 billion
Universities
London, Holborn
Took his degree in philosophy in 1951 while working as a railway porter and waiter, studying under Karl Popper.
Facts
- Karl Popper's idea of the open society, which he encountered as a student at LSE, became the name and the guiding principle of his foundations.
- He is said to have made about a billion dollars in a single day in 1992 by betting against the pound sterling.
- He funded scholarships and photocopiers for dissidents in Eastern Europe in the 1980s, on the theory that free copying broke state control of information.
Photographs
Photographs come from Wikimedia Commons under free licences; the author and licence are shown on each image.