George Soros

George Soros was born in Budapest, Hungary in 1930. He emigrated to England in 1947, where he graduated from London School of Economics (LSE). In 1956, he emigrated to the United States, where he began to accumulate a large fortune through his investment activities.

While a student at LSE, Mr Soros became familiar with the work of philosopher Karl Popper, who had a profound influence on his thinking and later on his philanthropic activities.

Mr Soros believes that an open society is a society based on the recognition that nobody has a monopoly on the truth, that different people have different views and interests, and that there is a need for institutions to protect the rights of people to allow them to live together in peace. Broadly, an open society is characterised by a reliance on the rule of law, the existence of a democratically elected government, a diverse and vigorous civil society, and respect for minorities and minority opinions.

Mr Soros established his first foundation, the Open Society Fund, in 1979, and his first Eastern European foundation in Hungary in 1984. In addition to many articles on political and economic changes in Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union, Mr. Soros is the author of The Alchemy of Finance (1987), Opening the Soviet System (1990), Underwriting Democracy (1991), The crisis of global capitalism - Open Society endangered (1998), and Reforming global capitalism (2000).