George Soros

He was born Schwartz Gyorgy to a prosperous, non-observant Jewish family in Budapest, and in 1936 they changed the name to Soros as camouflage in a country turning openly antisemitic. His father Tivadar was a lawyer who had escaped a Russian prison camp after the First World War, edited an Esperanto magazine, and raised his son in the language. In March 1944 the Germans occupied Hungary. He was 13, and the Jewish Council handed him slips of paper to deliver: a list of Hungarian Jewish lawyers being summoned. His father told him to deliver them and to tell every man that reporting meant deportation. He never went back. The family bought papers saying they were Christians, and at 14 he passed as the godson of a government official.

He reached London at 17, took a philosophy degree at the London School of Economics in 1951 and a master's in 1954, studied under Karl Popper, and worked as a railway porter and a waiter to pay for it. His marks were not good enough for the academic job he wanted, so he wrote to every managing director of every merchant bank in London and took the one offer that came back. He set up his first fund, Double Eagle, in 1969, and Soros Fund Management in 1970. The vehicle that became the Quantum Fund has generated roughly 40 billion dollars since 1973. In September 1992 he was short more than 10 billion dollars in sterling when Britain left the European exchange-rate mechanism, and cleared over a billion. The papers called him the man who broke the Bank of England.

That week cost the British Treasury an estimated 3.4 billion pounds. Stanley Druckenmiller, who traded under him, said he had spotted the weakness in the pound himself and that Soros's contribution was pushing him to take a gigantic position. In 1988 Soros bought into four French companies knowing that a group of investors was circling Societe Generale. French regulators cleared him, then reopened the file, and on June 14, 2006, the French Supreme Court upheld an insider trading conviction while cutting the penalty to 940,000 euros. He denied wrongdoing and took it to the European Court of Human Rights. The money made moving currencies is also the money he has given away: more than 15 billion dollars through the Open Society Foundations, roughly 64 percent of the fortune he started with.

His name has become a thing separate from him. Hungary's government declared him an enemy of the state in 2012 and ran a billboard campaign the country's own Jewish organizations called antisemitic. Scholars describe him as the point where antisemitic and Islamophobic conspiracy theories join. On October 22, 2018, a pipe bomb was left in his mailbox at Katonah, New York, one of 16 that Cesar Sayoc sent to 13 people. In June 2023 he handed the foundations to his son Alexander, who cut international staff about 40 percent within weeks. Biden gave him the Presidential Medal of Freedom in January 2025. The argument over what the money has done is not settled, and no longer runs on his terms.

George Soros's life against the full span of the corpus — the fading end marks a life still in progress.

• Soros Fund Management company
  Returned all outside money in 2011 and became a family office 1970
• Quantum Fund company
  About 40 billion dollars generated since inception 1973
• The Alchemy of Finance book
  His account of reflexivity in markets. Paul Volcker wrote a later foreword. 1987
• Open Society Foundations company
  The grant network that has distributed more than 15 billion dollars 1993
• Central European University company
  Endowed in Budapest, later the target of the Hungarian government 1991
• NURCHA company
  A South African housing venture that had built 200,000 homes by 2007 1995

• 1936 aged ~6 The family changes its name from Schwartz to Soros His father liked it because it is a palindrome. In Esperanto it means will soar.
• March 1944 aged 13 At 13, is handed deportation notices to deliver His father told him to warn every man on the list. He did not go back.
• 1947 aged ~17 Leaves Hungary at 17 for Paris and then London
• 1970 aged ~40 Founds Soros Fund Management in New York
• September 16, 1992 aged 62 Black Wednesday — Britain leaves the exchange-rate mechanism His fund was short more than 10 billion dollars in sterling and profited by over a billion.
• June 14, 2006 aged 75 The French Supreme Court upholds his insider trading conviction The penalty was cut to 940,000 euros. He appealed to the European Court of Human Rights.
• October 22, 2018 aged 88 A pipe bomb is found in his mailbox at Katonah, New York Cesar Sayoc sent 16 devices to 13 people and got 20 years.
• June 11, 2023 aged 92 Hands control of the Open Society Foundations to his son Alexander
• January 4, 2025 aged 94 Receives the Presidential Medal of Freedom from Joe Biden

• Paul Volcker 1927–2019
  Broke 1970s inflation as Federal Reserve chairman through sustained high interest rates. wrote a foreword for his book
• Warren Buffett b. 1930
  Value investor whose disciplined approach built one of the largest personal fortunes in American history. ranked beside him for giving
• Andrew Carnegie 1835–1919
  Steel magnate who built one of the largest steel empires in history and later became a major philanthropist. the earlier model of giving it away
• John D. Rockefeller 1839–1937
  Established the Rockefeller Foundation and funded medical research, education, and public health initiatives. predecessor in mass philanthropy
• Bill Gates b. 1955
  Co-founder of Microsoft who, through the Gates Foundation, has donated billions to global health and education. fellow large-scale funder