George was born on August 12, 1930, by Tividar and Erzebat Schwartz, in Budapest, Hungary. His father Tividar was an attorney who had a great passion for the promotion of Esperanto, a language developed in the 1880s. Soros family relocated from Hungary to England in the year 1947 after the Nazi-occupied Budapest. In England, he attended London School of Economics exposing him to the work of a philosopher named Karl Popper. Popper’s book, The Open Society and Its Enemies greatly influenced Soros activities. After graduation in the year 1952, Soros joined the London Broken Friedlander becoming proficient in international arbitrage which according to his definition involves buying securities in one country and selling them in another country. After four years at the London Friedlander, he relocated to New York where he worked as a stock trader on Wall Street. Since Soros had no intentions of settling in America, he had a five-year plan to make around $500,000 and return to Europe. However, his plan changed when he got work as a manager at the investment bank Arnhold and S.Bleichroeder Inc. Soros moved to Greenwich Village, New York in the year 1959, where early cultures of stirrings of counterculture had begun existing. Learn more about his profile at Forbes.com.
George married Annaliese Witshak the following year that remained as his wife until they divorced after 23 years. Soros became a US citizen in the year 1961, and two years later, Soros and his wife had their first son. In 1980, he met a poet named Allen Ginsberg who opened Soros eyes on the benefits of drug legalization, which up to date has been Soros project throughout his career. He established Double Eagle Fund in 1969, for Bleichroeder with $4 million capital, including $250,000 his personal money. After four years, Soros and his assistant Jim Rogers created a private partnership named Soros Fund Management. It changed from Double Eagle Funds name to The Soros Fund, which later renamed to The Quantum Fund in 1979. By 1980, its value had grown to over $381 million, and by 1985, the value had increased to more than $1 billion.
Learn more: http://bigthink.com/paul-ratner/why-does-the-right-hate-george-soros
Being a philanthropist, Soros launched his first Open Society Foundation in 1984 in his country of birth, after the concept he learned from Karl Popper. In 1987, he opened an office in Moscow where he began to disseminate large amounts of money to different groups. Soros says that his spending rose from $3 million a year in 1987 to more than $300 million a year, by the year 1992. During that period, He established many Foundations across Central Asia and Eastern Europe. Today, his Open Society Foundations are active in over 70 countries in the world. George Soros created the flagship of the Soros Foundation network in New York City in the year 1993, which went with the name Open Society Foundations until 2010.
Read more at The New York Times about George.