Michael Steinhardt is one of the most successful investors in the history of Wall Street and also widely known for his philanthropic activities, particularly in the Jewish community. He is the co-founder of Birthright Israel, a programme whose mission is to provide the means for every young Jewish person of the Diaspora to visit Israel.

Steinhardt is the founder of Steinhardt Partners, whose hedge fund produced an average annual return of 24 per cent, netting him a personal fortune reportedly worth over $500 million. He started with distinguished co-investors -- William Salomon, former managing partner of Salomon Brothers and Jack Nash, founder of Odyssey Partners.

Steinhardt didn't exactly go out with a bang. He ended his illustrious hedge fund career in 1995, a year after suffering big losses.

Not many know that demi-billionaire hedge fund operator's father, Sol Frank 'Red' Steinhardt, was a compulsive high-stakes gambler and colorful New York nightclub patron. Steinhardt decided to throw light on the dark side of his father in his autobiography No Bull: My Life In and Out of Markets. Steinhardt is a self-proclaimed atheist who devoted his later life to the welfare of American Jews and the State of Israel.

Sol was also convicted on charges of buying and selling stolen jewellery and was sentenced to five to 10 years in prison on each of two felony counts.

Visiting his father in prison, Steinhardt wrote, was an 'obligation' since Sol had paid for Steinhardt's education at the University of Pennsylvania's Wharton School. He recalled the 'desolate miserable grey visits, where his father would vehemently insist that he was innocent.'

Quite early in his life, Sol gave his son envelopes stuffed with $10,000 in $100 bills to put in the stock market. This helped Steinhardt build his net worth to $200,000 that early. In effect, his father was Steinhardt's first investment client.

Steinhardt had his own run in with the law. He and his firm were investigated, with Salomon Bros. and Caxton Group, for allegedly attempting to corner the market for short-term Treasury notes in the early 1990s.

He paid 75% of the $70 million in civil fines that were part of settling the case with the Securities and Exchange Commission and Justice Department -- a mere fraction of the $600 million his hedge fund made on the Treasury positions.

At heart, Steinhardt is a compulsive gambler like his father. "Speculative joy, the joy derived from being right and being rewarded may well be similar to the rush felt by a winning gambler," he writes. "I was happier when pursuing success than I was when savouring its fruits; the attraction, perhaps the addiction, was in the process, as much as in its end." Also read: How Nobel laureate Yunus helped defeat poverty

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