Serial rapist, child sex offender, and human trafficker Jeffrey Epstein attempted to contact Cambridge academics to discuss funding research on multiple occasions, Varsity can reveal.

Newly released documents from the US Department of Justice show an email exchange between Epstein and an intermediary attempting to organise a Skype call with a Cambridge researcher to discuss his work.

Epstein’s intermediary used the name “Jeffrey Stein” to avoid the researchers becoming aware of his crimes, and was described as a friend “who sponsored research from time to time”. Epstein’s associates failed to set up a meeting on two attempts. There is no indication that any research grants were ever made, and no evidence of any wrongdoing by the researchers or the University of Cambridge.

The disgraced financier was known to pursue the “smartest of the smart” academics to offer support to pursue cutting-edge research. In a 2017 interview with Science, he expressed a desire to assist researchers who want to develop “new theories of biology or some new form of mathematics”.

The exchange took place in 2018, ten years after Epstein plead guilty to procuring for prostitution a girl below age 18 in Florida, and one year prior to being arrested for sex trafficking and conspiracy to traffic minors for sex in New York.

The 2019 indictment against Epstein alleged he trafficked and sexually abused over a dozen underage women. The financier hanged himself in prison before standing trial.

Following his death, a series of declassified documents have detailed Epstein’s relationship with powerful figures including Peter Mandleson, Elon Musk, and Bill Gates.

The latest release of files also appear to show that Epstein planned a visit to the University of Cambridge in September 2010, where he asked to see academics including “dawkins, rees”. These names appear to refer to the biologist Richard Dawkins and the astronomer Lord Martin Rees. While Dawkins has never held a position at Cambridge, Rees was Master of Trinity College from 2004 to 2012 and is still associated with the University.

However, Varsity found no evidence that the trip to Cambridge actually took place, nor is there any evidence of wrongdoing by the academics mentioned.

Epstein had wide-reaching ties to multiple elite universities, having donated nearly $9 million to Harvard before his first conviction, and $800,000 to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology over a 20-year period – including after pleading guilty to sex offences.

Several professors across American universities were mentioned in the newly released files, including what is believed to be Harvard’s Martin Nowak, who emailed Epstein “our spy was captured after completing her mission,” to which Epstein replied “did you torture her”. It is unclear exactly what they are referring to.

Ex-Harvard University President Larry Summers was also implicated in a 2025 release of files. The documents indicated that Summers corresponded with Epstein until the day before the financier’s 2019 arrest for the alleged sex trafficking of minors.

Following the publication, Summers resigned from his teaching roles at Harvard, expressing “regret” and “shame” for his interactions with Epstein.

Epstein’s ties to Cambridge academics previously made headlines after court documents revealed that he emailed his partner, Ghislaine Maxwell, to find evidence disproving allegations that Professor Stephen Hawking had been involved in an “underage orgy”.

A later release of files pictured Hawking – a former Lucian Professor of Astrophysics and Trinity Hall Alumnus – at an event on Epstein’s private island, a site allegedly used to traffic underage women.