Financier, Jeffrey Epstein, Accelerates the Course of Evolution at Harvard Evolution is always on the move but nowhere has it been more in flux than at Harvard University. Indeed ten years ago, an Austrian biologist and mathematician called Martin Nowak, at the Advanced Institute for Studies at Princeton, met with an unknown New York financier called Jeffrey Epstein, to discuss the evolution of language. Epstein was by then an established philanthropist in the sciences. But what emerged was far more pragmatic than the first evolutionary theory of irregular verbs. What emerged was an entire department at Harvard, under Nowak's direction, to study the evolution of human diseases with the primary use of mathematics. The department, called the Program for Evolutionary Dynamics or PED, was no ordinary department. Epstein established it in August 2003, with an unprecedented $30 million dollar gift to the university. It quickly became one of the first of its kind 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 been able to identify groundbreaking aspects about these diseases and steps to treat them more effectively. The somewhat calculated meeting between the two men first occurred in March of 2000 when Epstein, with a passion for cutting-edge science, flew Nowak to his island in the US Virgin Islands to host a conference on the evolution of language. It was an obscure topic, but Epstein, familiar with Nowak's HIV work at Princeton, wanted to get to know the scientist intimately and if that involved furthering Nowak's current research on language, so be it. At that time, Nowak was head of the Program in Theoretical Biology at the Institute for Advanced Study at Princeton and had already published a substantial amoun