Martin Nowak has never been charged with any criminal offence. The findings against him were made by Harvard under its own policies, and the investigation opened in February 2026 has not concluded. He is a distinguished mathematical biologist whose scientific work has no connection to anything Epstein wanted. This page documents what he provided that was not scientific.
This is the cleanest single case in the archive of an institution being used as a laundering instrument — and of a named individual operating it.
Harvard took $9 million and barred him in 2008. The bar worked, in the narrow sense that no further PED donations arrived. What it did not touch was access — and access was the thing he actually wanted.
What an office at Harvard is worth. Not the desk. The address. A convicted sex offender with a Harvard office and a phone line can invite people to meet him there, and the invitation carries an institution’s name. Harvard’s review found he met visitors at PED.
The website page is the part that removes any ambiguity. A publicist asked for it. It contained descriptions the university later determined were false. Nowak approved it. That is the reputation machinery documented elsewhere on this site, operating inside a Harvard research programme.
And what finally stopped it is the detail worth sitting with. Not a policy. Not a compliance review. Not an administrator. Other researchers complained.
The science, meanwhile, was real and unrelated. PED studied the evolution of cooperation, the origins of life and biological networks. Nothing in its published output advances any aim Epstein is documented as holding. He was not buying research. He was buying a room in a building with a famous name on it.
An office at One Brattle Square, in a facility his own gift had paid for.
A building key card.
A phone line.
Forty-plus visits between 2010 and 2018 — all after the conviction, and after 2013 with explicit approval.
A page on the programme website, containing false claims about his philanthropy, added at his publicist’s request.
He had no formal affiliation with Harvard throughout.
Section 01
The Record
Nowak is a named beneficiary of the 1953 Trust — the vehicle Epstein signed two days before his death, distributing more than $350 million across 41 beneficiaries. The trust has never taken effect and he has not commented on the bequest. The estate file →
Epstein gives $6.5 million to Harvard — the largest single gift he ever made to the university, and part of more than $9 million in total. The 2003 gift established the Program for Evolutionary Dynamics and paid for a separate research facility in a Harvard Square office building.
Nowak’s programme studied the mathematics of evolution — the evolution of cooperation, the origins of life, and how biological networks operate. Its published output has no connection to Epstein’s stated aims.
Epstein pleads guilty. Harvard President Drew Faust bars him from making further donations. The 2020 review found no further PED donations after that point — and the access continued anyway.
Epstein visits PED’s offices at One Brattle Square more than forty times after his conviction, as recently as 2018. Nowak gave him an office, a building key card and a phone line. He had no formal affiliation with Harvard.
After 2013 the visits continue with Nowak’s explicit approval. Epstein meets visitors there — using a Harvard address to receive people.
Nowak approves a page on the PED website devoted to Epstein, carrying flattering and false descriptions of his philanthropy and support of Harvard — along with links to Epstein’s own websites. Both were added at the request of Epstein’s publicist.
The visits end — not because of any policy, review or administrator, but because other researchers complained to Nowak about Epstein’s presence.
Harvard’s review, conducted by the Office of General Counsel and Foley Hoag, concludes Epstein attempted to use Harvard and PED as a tool to rehabilitate his image. Nowak is placed on paid administrative leave. The report cleared Harvard’s senior leaders, finding they acted appropriately.
FAS Dean Claudine Gay announces the penalties: the Program for Evolutionary Dynamics is shut down, Nowak loses his appointment in organismic and evolutionary biology, and is barred from research and student advising for two years.
Ellen Zucker, for Nowak: “it’s a tired truth of organizational dynamics that individuals, and not institutions, are too often left alone to take responsibility when things go wrong.” Nowak said he was “humbled to be able to return to my work at Harvard.”
The DOJ publishes more than three million pages under the Epstein Files Transparency Act. Reporting on the new material indicates Nowak had contact with Epstein at least 150 times after the 2008 conviction, and describes personal dimensions including use of Epstein’s properties and aircraft.
A panel of the FAS Faculty Conduct Committee reviews the new material and recommends a formal inquiry. Dean Hopi Hoekstra places Nowak on paid administrative leave again, pending investigation into whether he violated University policies or standards of professional conduct. The investigation is ongoing and no finding has been announced.
Section 02
The Argument His Lawyer Made
When Harvard sanctioned him in 2021, Nowak’s lawyer said something this archive has to take seriously rather than dismiss.
“It’s a tired truth of organizational dynamics that individuals, and not institutions, are too often left alone to take responsibility when things go wrong.”
The 2020 review that ended his programme also cleared Harvard’s senior leadership, finding they had acted appropriately. One professor lost his research centre. The institution that took $9 million lost nothing.
And the substance of the point holds up. Harvard barred Epstein as a donor in 2008 and then, on its own account, did not notice a convicted sex offender visiting a campus research centre forty times over eight years with a key card. MIT ran the same pattern — and there too the consequences landed on a director and a development officer, not on the institution.
Where the argument runs out. Nowak personally approved the website page. He personally approved the post-2013 visits. Those are individual acts, not institutional drift, and the review found them to be violations of Harvard policy rather than gaps in it.
Both things are true, and the page holds them together: the institution escaped accountability it deserved, and the individual did things no institutional failure required of him.
The February 2026 leave suggests the record was incomplete. Reporting on the new DOJ material describes at least 150 contacts after the conviction — far more than the visit count — and personal dimensions including use of Epstein’s properties and aircraft. Harvard’s inquiry is ongoing and has made no finding.
Section 03
Open Questions
Section 04
Sources
Report Finds Epstein Used His Program to Rehabilitate Image
May 2020. The 40+ visits, the office and key card, and the false website descriptions.
thecrimson.com →Placed on Leave a Second Time
Feb 2026. The FAS Faculty Conduct Committee referral following the DOJ release.
thecrimson.com →Sanctioned
Mar 2021. The closure of PED, the lost appointment, and the two-year bar.
harvardmagazine.com →The Second Leave
2026. The 40+ visits between 2010 and 2018, and the wider fallout including Summers.
harvardmagazine.com →Harvard Punishes Professor, Closes Center
2021. Nowak’s statement, his lawyer’s response, and the $200,000 redirected to victim support.
timesofisrael.com →Marvin Minsky
The first MIT grant, the jail visits, the 2011 boat manifest — and an allegation he never answered.
Read the profile →Reid Hoffman
The Baume dinner, the Thiel recommendation, and the timeline he corrected himself.
Read the profile →Harvard
The $9.1 million, the barred-donor list, and the money that arrived anyway.
Read the report →The Research Ledger
What PED actually studied, and why it served none of his aims.
Read the report →George Church
The Harvard scientist whose field genuinely did overlap.
Read the profile →