Revelations about Jeffrey Epstein’s contacts with scientists have now also damaged a Nobel Prize winner.
Richard Axel (79), winner of a Nobel Prize for genetic research into the sense of smell in 2004, appears to have maintained friendly contacts with the sex offender for years, even after his first conviction in 2008. Axel is now stepping down as co-director of the brain institute at Columbia University in New York. He will remain affiliated with the institute as a lecturer.
Molecular biologist Axel, who has been a professor at Columbia since 1978, is not accused of any criminal offences. According to Columbia, he also did not violate any university rules. The university nevertheless calls it “appropriate” that he has stepped down as leader of the Mortimer B. Zuckerman Research Center for brain research. At that institute he headed a laboratory with twelve researchers. Axel also leaves as a researcher at the Howard Hughes Medical Institute, a prominent biomedical institute in the state of Maryland.
The Nobel Prize winner repeatedly visited Epstein in New York over the years, according to documents released by the Justice Department. Axel mentioned the millionaire in a profile in the magazine New York in 2007 a gifted networker and “exceptionally smart”. In 2011, three years after Epstein was first convicted of sexual abuse, Axel accepted an invitation to visit his Caribbean island with his wife. The trip was cancelled. Contact between the two lasted until five months before Epstein’s death in 2019.
The documents also show that Axel advised Epstein on ways to get acquaintances admitted to Columbia. For example, he worked for a daughter of the Rothschild banking family. “She is good but not the best candidate,” he wrote Epstein, “I am applying pressure.” Ultimately she was rejected. In one of the documents After his conviction in 2008, Epstein jokes about his status as a sex offender with a scientist who educates him on neurology and who is referred to as ‘Richard’.
In a short explanation Axel now calls his relations with Epstein “a serious error of judgment” and “inconsiderate” in light of the revelations about the multimillionaire’s sexual crimes. He apologizes for “betraying the trust of my friends, students and colleagues.”
Meeting celebrities
With the resignation of the Nobel Prize laureate, the fuss over the Epstein case has now taken its toll at that scientific level. It is not clear how contact between the two came about, but they are said to have known each other since the 1980s. The documents released by the Justice Department show that Epstein contacted numerous scientists, often with the promise of donations or the chance to meet other celebrities.
Richard Axel made his mark early on in areas in which Epstein was particularly interested. In the 1970s, he and two others discovered a way to introduce DNA into a host cell, a technique for which the three applied for patents in 1980. The so-called ‘Axel patents’, which lasted until 2000, earned Columbia millions, sometimes up to 100 million dollars per year.
Axel was awarded the Nobel Prize for Medicine in 2004 for his research into olfaction, with colleague Linda Buck. The duo managed to map a group of genes that form the basis of odor receptors in the nose. In doing so, they provided much more insight into the structure and functioning of the olfactory organ and provided the impetus for further genetic and molecular research.
Epstein, who committed suicide in prison in 2019, like some other super-rich people in the US, showed a keen interest in groundbreaking research into intelligence and genetics. He was fascinated by transhumanism, techniques to lift people – themselves first – cognitively and emotionally to a higher evolutionary level or even overcome death.
In addition to Axel, Epstein also used other contacts to get acquaintances a place at Columbia. For example, in 2012 he pledged millions to the dental school to get his then Belarusian girlfriend admitted there. According to The New York Times accepted the training only smaller donations but the girlfriend, now Epstein’s heir, was admitted. He paid for her studies.
