Jim and Marilyn are the best science administrators that I've ever worked with. They have a sense of what's important and a willingness to follow through on things. When I took the job there were seven people at the foundation, we were down on 17th Street, and I think 5th Avenue. I was still riding my bike in from Riverdale, including one day when I got knocked over by a taxicab.

But the seven people were active and good. And you know that today there are 450 people, so it's grown quite a bit. But in those early days I felt a very close, warm understanding, enthusiastic relation. Especially with Jim who, as a mathematician, knew what it took to get things done in science, as well as business, and was very supportive.

One of the first decisions was that we were going to focus on genes and genetics. Jim was very influenced by Mike Wigler, who was a friend from Cold Spring Harbor, and I don't know where else. But Mike is a brilliant, arrogant guy, who does not tolerate dissenting opinions very well. I'll give you one example.

He claimed that he was getting interested in autism, quite independently of Jim Simons. He had a childhood friend who was on the spectrum, and he wanted to do something. He had gotten interested in this genetic phenomenon called copy number variants, where there's either a deletion of one copy of the gene on one of the chromosomes, or a duplication or a triplication. Or, in some cases, a 50-fold increase in the number. He was convinced, for some reason, that copy number variants, CNVs, would be the secret to autism. So, he got a grant from Simons, a significantly large grant, and went to work and discovered several CNVs. One of which is on chromosome 16p11.2, got a lot of press. Now there's something like 200 or 250 people in the Simons cohort with that particular variant. I don't know what fraction of deletions and what duplications, but it's amazing that this region in the genome seems to be targeted. The problem is, there are 20-plus genes, 29 genes I think, in that segment, so to go on to the next stage from genetic implication to mechanism, has been tough.