George Soros was born in Budapest, Hungary in 1930. He survived the Nazi occupation and left communist Hungary in 1947 for England, where he graduated from the London School of Economics (LSE) in 1952. While a student at LSE, Soros became familiar with the work of the philosopher Karl Popper, who had a profound influence on his thinking and later on his professional and philanthropic activities.

In 1956, Soros moved to the United States, where he began to accumulate a large fortune through an international investment fund he founded and managed. He is currently the president and chairman of Soros Fund Management LLC, a private investment management firm that serves as principal advisor to the Quantum Group of Funds, a series of international investment vehicles. In July 2000, Soros merged his flagship Quantum Fund with the Quantum Emerging Growth Fund to form the Quantum Endowment Fund. The Quantum Fund is generally recognized as one of the most successful investment funds ever, returning an average 31 percent annually throughout its more than 30-year history.

Soros has been active as a philanthropist since 1979, when he began providing funds to help black students attend the University of Cape Town in apartheid South Africa. Today he is chairman of the Open Society Institute and the founder of a network of philanthropic organizations that are active in more than 50 countries. Based primarily in Central and Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union-but also in Africa, Latin America, Asia, and the United States-these foundations are dedicated to building and maintaining the infrastructure and institutions of an open society. In 1992, Soros founded Central European University, with its primary campus in Budapest.

Soros is the author of seven books, most recently George Soros on Globalization (PublicAffairs, March 2002). His other books include: The Alchemy of Finance (1987); Opening the Soviet System (1990); Underwriting Democracy (1991); Soros on Soros: Staying Ahead of the Curve (1995); The Crisis of Global Capitalism: Open Society Endangered (1998); and Open Society: Reforming Global Capitalism (2000). His articles and essays on politics, society, and economics regularly appear in major newspapers and magazines around the world.

Soros has received honorary degrees from the New School for Social Research in New York City, the University of Oxford, the Budapest University of Economics, and Yale University. In 1995, the University of Bologna awarded Soros its highest honor, the Laurea Honoris Causa, in recognition of his efforts to promote open societies throughout the world.