The academics who stuck by disgraced Epstein to the end – and those who didn't

According to newly released emails, a group of thinkers kept ties with the tycoon long after most cut them. One even recommended a book 'similar' to Lolita. Alexi Mostrous, head of investigations, reports

- Alexi Mostrous

Jeffrey Epstein at a dinner he hosted at his Manhattan townhouse in 2006 with, from left, George Church, Martin Nowak and Steven Pinker. American computer scientist Marvin Minsky, Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak, and American labor lawyer Jay Waks also attended. The townhouse is in the recent tranche of court documents.

(RICK FRIEDMAN/Bloomberg)

By 2018 Jeffrey Epstein's social circle had shrunk from the grandiose heights of a few years earlier, when he regularly hobnobbed with former prime ministers, royalty and captains of industry.

Many high-profile figures, such as Prince Andrew, now Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor, had distanced themselves from the financier who served 13 months in prison after being convicted in 2008 for soliciting underage sex.

But one group of luminaries seemed happy to keep in close contact: academics. Epstein had long been fascinated by science and had befriended some of the world's leading thinkers, including Murray Gell-Mann, the Nobel prizewinning physicist who proposed the concept of the quark and Stephen Hawking, the theoretical physicist. Epstein called himself a "science philanthropist" and donated more than $10m (£7.6m) to institutions such as MIT and Harvard University, where he had an office on campus.

An analysis of the 20,000 Epstein emails released by the US House oversight committee last week shows that several top intellectuals did not break with Epstein until 10 years after his 2008 conviction - and in some cases only ceased contact months before he was found dead in a prison cell in August 2019.

In November 2018, three days before the Miami Herald published a bombshell investigation into Epstein that led to his eventual arrest, Elisa New, a professor of American literature at Harvard, emailed him with a request. She wanted Epstein's advice on how to persuade Serena Williams, the tennis superstar, to take part in her Poetry in America TV series.