1) Math prodigy Jimmy Simmons was born in 1938 into a modest family in Newton, Massachusetts. He was mischievous yet top of his class. He was quite the thinker. His friends would remark on how he would lay down doing nothing but thinking, mostly about mathematical theories and concepts.
2) By age 20, Simmons had already gotten engaged and graduated from MIT with a degree in math. He decided to study for his doctorate at Berkeley. He and his fiancée, Barbara Bluestein, moved to the San Francisco area and were married.
