George Soros – Founder of the Open Society Fund Prague

A global financier and philanthropist, George Soros is the founder and chairman of an international network of foundations that promote the creation of open, democratic societies based upon the rule of law, transparent governance, freedom of the press, and respect for human rights.

George Soros was born in Budapest in 1930. He left Hungary in 1946 and, in 1947, moved to the UK to enrol at the London School of Economics. It was there that G.Soros became acquainted with the work of the philosopher Karl Popper, whose ideas on open society had a profound influence on his intellectual development. In 1956, G.Soros immigrated to the United States. He worked as a trader and analyst until 1963. During this period, Mr Soros adapted Popper's ideas to develop his own theory of reflexivity, a set of ideas that seeks to explain the relationship between thought and reality, which he used to predict, among other things, the emergence of financial bubbles. Mr Soros later applied the theory of reflexivity in his own investment activities – in 1973 he set up a private investment firm that eventually evolved into the Quantum Fund, one of the most successful investment funds ever.

As his financial success mounted, Mr Soros applied his wealth for philanthropic purposes. In 1979, he provided funds to help black students attend the University of Cape Town in apartheid South Africa. Mr Soros also distributed funds to the underground Solidarity movement in Poland and, through the Stockholm-based Charter 77 Foundation, he provided support to anti-communist intelligentsia in Czechoslovakia. In 1982, George Soros named his philanthropic organization the Open Society Fund, in honor of Karl Popper. In 1984, Mr Soros founded a foundation in Budapest, the first of its kind in Central Europe, with another one established in Moscow in 1987. In 1993, Mr Soros created the Open Society Institute, which supports the Soros foundations working to develop democratic institutions throughout Central and Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union.  His network of philanthropic organizations dedicated to building open societies has expanded to include more than 60 countries all over the world, including the United States. In 1991, he helped found the Central European University, a graduate institution in Budapest. In recent years he has focused more intensively on the issue of the social and political impact of globalization. Through the foundations he annually contributes 500 million dollars to the advancement of civil societies. As he noted in his own book, Open Society: Reforming Global Capitalism, George Soros is one of many financiers, but he is almost unique in his philanthropic activities.


George Soros is also the author of a number of books, such as The Alchemy of Finance (1987), Underwriting Democracy (1991) and Soros on Soros (1997), more recently The Age of Fallibility, Consequences of the War on Terror (2006); all these books have been translated into Czech. His other titles include The Crisis of Global Capitalism: Open Society Endangered (1998), Open Society: Reforming Global Capitalism (2000), George Soros on Globalization (2002), The Bubble of American Supremacy (2005). His latest book is called The New Paradigm for Financial Markets (2008). His essays on politics, society, and economics appear frequently in major periodicals around the world.


George Soros has received honorary degrees, e.g. from the New School for Social Research, Oxford University, the Budapest University of Economics, and Yale University in recognition of his efforts to promote open societies throughout the world. In 1995, the University of Bologna awarded Mr Soros its highest honor, the Laurea Honoris Causa. In November 1998 he was awarded the Charter 77 Foundation Prize, in 1999 the Hannah Arendt Prize, and in May 2000 he received the Man of the Year Award in Warsaw, awarded to him by Gazeta Wyborcza. The Dayton Peace Prize of 2002 recognized his efforts to promote peace in the Balkans.