Jim Simons, after retiring from Renaissance Technologies with a cool 15 billion, has spent the last 10 years giving grants to people in the pure sciences. He's

Jim Simons, after retiring from Renaissance Technologies with a cool 15 billion, has spent the last 10 years giving grants to people in the pure sciences. He's a true academic at heart -- a BS from MIT in Math, PhD from Berkeley which yielded a whole new field (heh) of something to do with Riemannian manifolds that's way beyond my ability to grok but apparently it's on par with "oh yeah I invented abstract algebra (a la Emmy Noether)", worked at Princeton for the NSA cracking Cold War codes during Vietnam but got fired because he wanted to do his own recreational mathematics instead. Anyways, he's very fond of academics and gives MacArthur-esque grants, especially to people who want to change the way mathematics is taught. Approach his fund. I'm 100% sure he'll give you a grant on the spot.