George Soros

George Soros has been married to Tamiko Bolton since 2013. He was previously married to Annaliese Witschak from 1960 to 1983 and Susan Weber from 1983 to 2005.

He has five children: Robert, Andrea, Jonathan, Alexander, and Gregory. His son Alexander later assumed leadership of the Open Society Foundations and other enterprises associated with the family.

Born as Schwartz György in Budapest, Soros grew up in a Jewish family during a period of rising antisemitism in Hungary. In 1936, his family changed its surname from Schwartz to Soros. During the Nazi occupation of Hungary from 1944 to 1945, the family survived by using false identity papers, concealing their background, and helping other Jewish families do the same.

Soros left Hungary for London in 1947 and supported his studies by working as a railway porter and nightclub waiter. He studied philosophy at the London School of Economics, where he was influenced by philosopher Karl Popper, and later moved to New York City in 1956 to pursue a career in finance.

Soros began in finance as an arbitrage trader and analyst, working at Singer & Friedlander, F. M. Mayer, Wertheim & Co., and Arnhold and S. Bleichroeder. He developed the theory of reflexivity, which holds that participants' beliefs and actions can influence market values and economic conditions.

In 1970, Soros and investor Jim Rogers founded the Quantum Fund. Soros gained international fame in 1992 after taking a large short position against the British pound before the currency was forced out of the European Exchange Rate Mechanism. The trade became associated with the Black Wednesday crisis and led to his nickname, "the man who broke the Bank of England."

His financial career also included controversy. A French court convicted him of insider trading in connection with a 1988 Société Générale stock transaction, and France's highest court upheld the conviction in 2006. Soros continued to deny wrongdoing and appealed to the European Court of Human Rights, which rejected his appeal in 2011.

Soros began his philanthropy in 1979 by providing scholarships to Black South Africans under apartheid. In the 1980s, he supported academic exchanges, independent cultural groups, and dissidents in Communist Hungary. He established the Open Society Foundations as a network devoted to human rights, democratic governance, education, social reform, and accountable institutions.

In 1991, his financial support helped create Central European University in Budapest, which focuses on the social sciences, humanities, and the development of open societies. His philanthropic work later expanded across Central and Eastern Europe, Africa, Asia, Latin America, and the United States. He also supported drug policy reform, refugee organizations, public health, independent media, and criminal justice reform.

The Hungarian government of Viktor Orbán repeatedly criticized Soros and his organizations. In 2018, the Open Society Foundations moved its office from Budapest to Berlin amid what it characterized as an increasingly repressive environment. Soros's political activism and philanthropy have also made him the subject of conspiracy theories, many of which have been characterized as antisemitic.

Soros has written extensively about financial markets, globalization, political power, and open societies. His books include The Alchemy of Finance, The Crisis of Global Capitalism: Open Society Endangered, The Age of Fallibility, The New Paradigm for Financial Markets, and Financial Turmoil in Europe and the United States.

His theory of reflexivity applies ideas associated with Karl Popper to financial markets, arguing that investors' perceptions can affect the conditions they are trying to evaluate. He has also used his writing to criticize market fundamentalism, authoritarian politics, and policies that he believes threaten democratic institutions.

Soros has received honorary doctorates from institutions including Yale University, the University of Oxford, the New School for Social Research, and Corvinus University of Budapest. He was elected an Honorary Fellow of the British Academy, named the Financial Times Person of the Year for 2018, and awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom by President Joe Biden in 2025.