Hedge Fonder, Jeffrey Epstein, Catapults Evolution at Harvard Evolution is always in flux but nothing drives it more than money. So when an elusive hedge funder from New York called Jeffrey Epstein, arrived at Harvard University ten years ago with a $30 million dollar offer to set up a little department devoted to evolution, the University board welcomed him with a Darwinian hug. The little department set up for business in August 2003 just off of Brattle Square. But instead of falling into the somnolent annals of academia, it shifted the entire study of evolution from a purely theoretical exercise to a pragmatic tool for medicine. Jeffrey Epstein, who cultivates brilliant scientists, a virtual salon of Nobel luminaries and other such geniuses, put Martin Nowak in charge of his new department and called it the Program for Evolutionary Dynamics or PED. PED quickly became one of the first departments to study the mathematical evolution of micro biology, notably cancer, infectious diseases and viruses such as HIV—in view of advancing their treatment. And by creating the first mathematical models of how human cancer cells, viruses and bacteria evolve, Nowak and his graduate team have identified groundbreaking steps to treat these diseases more effectively. Nowak is an Austrian biologist and mathematician with an extensive background in evolutionary theory. Prior to PED's establishment, he headed the Program in Theoretical Biology at the Institute for Advanced Study at Princeton and had published a substantial amount of work on the mathematics of the HIV virus, infectious bacteria, and cancers. Prior to Princeton, Nowak led the mathematical- biology group at Oxford University. Upon his appointment to run PED, Nowak was also made Professor and Mathematics and Biology at Harvard. Nowak met the master puppeteer, Jeffrey Epstein, in March 2000 at a conference on the evolution of language. Epstein's intention was not learn about the evolution of irregular