'Did you torture her?': Harvard professor Martin Nowak's emails with Epstein reveal shocking exchanges and mention in will

Harvard professor Martin Nowak's deep ties with convicted child sex offender Jeffrey Epstein have resurfaced after the release of the files by the Department of Justice. Along with email chains, the documents reveal a $6.5M gift, private travel and even university sanctions, in shocking revelations.

Nowak, a popular mathematical biologist appears more than 4,000 times in the records released under the 2025 Epstein Files Transparency Act, as per The Sunday Guardian.

Martin Nowak in Epstein files

The documents reveal that Epstein and Nowak shared a long-standing financial and personal relationship that continued even after the late billionaire was convicted in 2008.

In 2003, Epstein gave $6.5 million to establish Program for Evolutionary Dynamics (PED) at Harvard which Nowak founded and led. This was a part of his larger $9.1 million donations to the university. Epstein also kept a private office in the PED building for 10 years and visited more than forty times between 2010 and 2018.

In 2014, the two exchanged an email where the professor wrote to Epstein, "our spy was captured after completing her mission." To this Epstein responded, "Did you torture her?"

In another email, a writer told Nowak that Epstein wanted to have dinner with him, the 'Chomskys' and 'all the boys' at the Institute. “Jeffrey would like to have dinner at the Institute this Friday with the Chomskys and `all the boys' he says he would like an hour with you alone first—will this work for you? I know you said you have something starting at 4 pm at PED,” they wrote. Chomsky here refers to Noam Chomsky, who has also been mentioned in the files earlier.

Apart from professional help and suspicious emails, Nowak also stayed at Epstein's New York apartment and thanked his accomplice Ghislaine Maxwell for "amazing hospitality". He was also a planned beneficiary of $5 million in Epstein's will, just days before his death.

Who is Martin Nowak?

Martin Nowak is an Austrian-born professor of math and biology at Harvard University. From cancer progression to viral systems, he has researched on numerous diverse topics. He also founded and ran the Program for Evolutionary Dynamics (PED) at the university.

Born in Vienna in 1965, he went to Albertus Magnus School and studied Biochemistry and Mathematics at the University of Vienna. He went to Oxford as an Erwin Schrödinger Scholar in 1989 and became Professor of Mathematical Biology in 1997. He joined Harvard in 2003. A highly cited and popular scholar he has previously held positions at the Institute for Advanced Study as well.

A Harvard-trial

In 2020, Harvard shut down PED and banned Nowak from starting new research or advising students for at least two years. This was after he was suspended following a university review that found he had extensive and unreported contact with Epstein. The review also found that Nowak devoted a page to Epstein on the centre's website with links to the financier's website.

However, all sanctions were lifted in 2023 and Nowak remains a professor with joint appointments in Mathematics and Organismic and Evolutionary Biology at the university.

Epstein killed himself in Metropolitan Correctional Centre, New York City in 2019 after being arrested on sex trafficking charges. He had pleaded not guilty to sexually abusing girls as young as 14 and young women in New York and Florida in the early 2000s.