Soros was born in Budapest in 1930, as Dzjchdzhe Shorash. When the Nazis invaded the city in 1944, Soros's father arranged for false papers for his family and friends that identified them as non-Jews. Most of the people his father helped survived the war, Soros said in the essay published in the New York Review of Books in late June.

'Evil Force'

"Instead of submitting to our fate we resisted an evil force that was much stronger than we were -- yet we prevailed. Not only did we survive, but we managed to help others," he wrote, adding the experience gave him an appetite for taking risk. "This left a lasting mark on me, turning a disaster of unthinkable proportions into an exhilarating adventure."

After London, Soros came to New York at the age of 26 and became a trader, initially buying and selling stocks for Wall Street brokerage F.M. Mayer. He planned to work for five years, enough time, he reckoned, to save $500,000 and return to England where he would pursue his philosophical studies, according to an interview he gave to Michael Kaufman, author of "Soros: The Life and Times of a Messianic Billionaire."

Instead, he stayed in the world of finance, eventually moved to Arnhold and S. Bleichroeder Advisors LLC, where he set up the predecessor to the Quantum fund in 1969. He started his own firm in 1973.

Conflicting Goals

Over the years, Soros had to deal with conflicting goals of making good and doing good. While Soros's fund made about $750 million betting on a decline in the Thai baht in 1997, the wager increased economic woes in Thailand as the government spent billions unsuccessfully defending its currency. In the wake of the devaluation, Thailand was forced to cut public spending in exchange for a $17.2 billion rescue package from the International Monetary Fund.

In 1997, his philanthropic tendencies drove him to buy Russian assets. He took a $1 billion stake in RAO Svyazinvest, Russia's state-owned telecommunications company, and went on to buy Russian stocks and bonds. He didn't sell his positions even after publishing a piece in the Financial Times advising the government to devalue the ruble by 15 percent to 25 percent. Four days later, Russia followed his advice.

"He felt that if he was a beacon of investment in Russia, others would follow and the capital inflows would transform the society and integrate them into the G7," Robert Johnson, a former Soros managing director, told author Sebastian Mallaby in his book 'More Money than God.' "There's a philanthropic side of George that started to interfere with the speculative one."

'Public Interest'

In his recent essay, Soros echoed the remarks of his former colleague.