Stephen Hawking

Born	January 8, 1942, Oxford1
Died	March 14, 2018, aged 761
Positions	Lucasian Professor of Mathematics, University of Cambridge, 1979 to 2009; Dennis Stanton Avery and Sally Tsui Wong-Avery Director of Research, Department of Applied Mathematics and Theoretical Physics, until his death1
Contact with Epstein	Attended “Confronting Gravity”, the physics symposium Epstein’s foundation sponsored on St. Thomas from March 16 to 21, 2006, and was taken to Little Saint James during the same trip23
Money	Named in Epstein foundation publicity as a scientist the foundation had supported; the searches described below returned no payment, grant, invoice or travel record in the released files naming him456
Adverse claim	A claim that he took part in an orgy in the Virgin Islands circulated in press and online reports in January 2015; Epstein proposed a reward to disprove it, and the lawyer who had repeated it publicly told a Florida court he had collected no documents supporting it before he made the statement. No complainant has ever publicly accused Hawking, and the unsealed court filings contain no such allegation. Hawking died in 2018 and no response from him is recorded here781910

Stephen William Hawking (January 8, 1942 to March 14, 2018) was a theoretical physicist and cosmologist, Lucasian Professor of Mathematics at the University of Cambridge from 1979 to 2009 and Director of Research in the university’s Department of Applied Mathematics and Theoretical Physics until his death.¹ He attended “Confronting Gravity”, a physics symposium held on St. Thomas in the U.S. Virgin Islands from March 16 to 21, 2006, which Epstein’s foundation sponsored and Lawrence Krauss organised, and was taken to Epstein’s island Little Saint James during the same trip.¹¹²³ Epstein’s foundation named Hawking repeatedly in its own promotional writing as a scientist whose work it had supported, and a correspondent working on Epstein’s websites circulated photographs of him taken on the island; those documents were written for Epstein, and the searches described below returned no payment, grant, invoice or travel record in the released files naming Hawking.⁴⁵¹²⁶ In January 2015 press and online reports named Hawking among men said to have been present at an orgy on Epstein’s island. Epstein wrote to Ghislaine Maxwell that week proposing a reward for people who would “come forward and help prove her allegations are false”, listing that claim among them; Maxwell replied, “That’s just seriously bad idea So no I won’t.”⁷ Later that year, in a Florida case, Alan Dershowitz was asked to produce every source he had relied on in publicly stating that a complainant had said Hawking was a participant in an orgy, and answered that he had collected no documents before making the statement.⁸

Background

Hawking was born in Oxford on January 8, 1942, became Lucasian Professor of Mathematics at Cambridge in 1979, a chair once held by Isaac Newton, and retired from it in 2009, after which he was the Dennis Stanton Avery and Sally Tsui Wong-Avery Director of Research in the Department of Applied Mathematics and Theoretical Physics until his death.¹ He died on March 14, 2018, aged 76.¹ He was not a Nobel laureate, a point on which the local newspaper report discussed below is wrong.¹¹³

Named in Epstein foundation publicity

Hawking’s name appears across a body of promotional material written for Epstein and his foundation. A blog draft headed “Jeffrey Epstein Weebly Blog 3 FREEMAN 11-14-2012” says under the subheading “Other Scientists”: “The Foundation has granted support to luminaries such as theoretical physicist, Stephen Hawking. Other well-known scientists include, Kip Thorne, Murray Gell-Mann, and Gregory Benford.”⁴ An article circulated for Epstein about Harvard’s Program for Evolutionary Dynamics says: “By 2003, he had supported the research of many prominent scientists, including Stephen Hawking, Marvin Minsky, Eric Lander, George Church, and Nobel laureate physicists Gerard ‘t Hooft, David Gross, and Frank Wilczek.”⁵ A second such article, about a Berlin artificial-intelligence project, says: “His roster of luminaries includes Stephen Hawking, Marvin Minsky, Martin Nowak and Nobel laureate physicists Gerard ‘t Hooft, David Gross, and Frank Wilczek”; the only claim that article attributes to New York Magazine is the separate statement that Epstein “has donated up to $200 million a year to prominent scientists”.¹⁴ A draft for an Epstein WordPress site, carrying visible editing marks, adds: “He has provided financial support to the renowned theoretical physicist, Stephen Hawking and was the first to invite Hawking under the ocean in a chartered submarine.”¹⁵ A newspaper report of January 2015 quotes Epstein’s LinkedIn profile to the same effect: “His work has supported eminent scientists around the world, Nobel laureates and well-known luminaries such as Stephen Hawking.”³

These are Epstein’s own accounts of his giving rather than records of it, and their rosters do not agree with one another: the Weebly draft pairs Hawking with Kip Thorne, Murray Gell-Mann and Gregory Benford, the Harvard article with Minsky, Eric Lander and George Church, the Berlin article with Minsky and Martin Nowak.⁴⁵¹⁴ A prepared summary of the foundation, then operating as Enhanced Education, lists its organisational grants over three years and says it “has provided substantial support to individual scientists, including but not limited to cognitive psychologists and scientists such as Marvin Minsky and Stephen Kosslyn, as well as Howard Gardner, a theoretical biologist”; Hawking is not among the individuals it names, and the qualification “including but not limited to” means the list does not purport to be complete.¹¹

The 2006 symposium and the visit to the island

The same foundation summary records among the symposiums it sponsored: “Physics Symposium ‘Confronting Gravity’ March 16-21, 2006”, which it says “dealt with the fields of Cosmology and Astrophysics” and “provided an interdisciplinary framework for interactions between five Nobel Laureates and faculty, postdoctoral researchers, graduate and undergraduate students, educators and the public.”¹¹ An article written for Epstein afterwards describes the meeting as a symposium of “Twenty one of the world’s top physicists” opened on St. Thomas, financed by Epstein and “his foundation, J. Epstein Virgin Islands Inc.” and organised by Krauss, and lists the participants: “Other scientists in attendance were theoretical physicist, Stephen Hawking, Jim Peebles from Princeton University, Alan Guth from MIT, Kip Thorne from Caltech, Lisa Randall from Harvard University, Barry Barish from LIGO, the gravitational wave observatory, a bevy of observational cosmologists and Maria Spiropulu from CERN near Geneva, Switzerland.”² Attendance was reported at the time. A financial-news blog item posted on August 1, 2006 says its author had “uncovered published reports about a” physics symposium “in St. Thomas that Epstein organized, which was attended by Nobel prize winners Gerardus’t Hooft, David Gross and Frank Wilczek, and physicist Stephen Hawking”, and links for that to a St. Thomas Source report headlined “Physicists Debate Gravity at St. Thomas Symposium”; two words struck through in the printed page are omitted from the quotation.¹⁶

A British newspaper report of January 2015, held in the release as an untitled and undated clipping, published photographs from the trip. It says Hawking “can be seen at a barbecue on Little St James as well as taking a boat cruise and submarine tour of the sea bed off the island”, that Epstein “is said to have paid for the submarine to be modified for Professor Hawking, who had never been underwater before”, that Hawking “visited Epstein’s ‘Island of Sin’ in March 2006”, and that he “was one of 21 internationally-renowned scientists attending a conference, funded by Epstein, on gravity at the Ritz-Carlton hotel on neighbouring island St Thomas”.³ Quoted in the same report, Krauss said the conference “wouldn’t have happened if Epstein hadn’t funded it”, said he had seen nothing of the photographs of adolescent girls described in legal filings, and said he “would have had no idea about the court proceedings against Epstein if journalists had not contacted him”.³ The New York Times reported in July 2019 that scientists “flew to conferences sponsored by Mr. Epstein in the United States Virgin Islands and were feted on his private island there”, and that “Once, the scientists, including Mr. Hawking, crowded on board a submarine that Mr. Epstein had chartered.”¹⁷

The Guardian later reported the same trip independently: in January 2024, that Hawking “went to dinner on Epstein’s private isle in the US Virgin Islands in 2006, after participating in a conference on a neighboring island, per prior reports”; and in February 2026, that a 2006 conference convened by Edge on “the Caribbean island of St Thomas” that included “the late Stephen Hawking” was followed by “a trip to the nearby private island retreat of the science philanthropist Jeffrey Epstein, who funded the event.”¹⁸¹⁹

On March 14, 2012 a correspondent working on Epstein’s websites sent a colleague at his office, copying Epstein, three image files whose names appear in the header, among them “Lawrence_Krauss_and_Stephen_Hawking_off_Jeffrey_Epstein’s_island.jpg”, with a link to material on Epstein’s “gravity conference held a few years ago” and the request, “Could you spread this info out?” The same message says the writer was waiting for a full list of Epstein’s foundations “so that we can add variety to his website titles and blogs which as you said, will help pull them up in the search engines.”¹²

Hawking’s name in Epstein’s correspondence, 2010 to 2015

On November 29, 2010 Krauss wrote to Epstein about an Origins Project event planned for the following April: “Stephen Hawking is coming April 8th to 15th to visit Origins as a part of it”. Hawking’s people had quoted “$29,800” for the Texas to Phoenix leg of the journey, which Krauss said he had to cover, and he asked Epstein whether he “might be interested in flying to tx and accompanying him (and staying for the weekend’s festivities) or covering airfare?”²⁰ Epstein replied the next morning, “did you get the 100k i sent”, which does not answer the question about the airfare; no document cited here records whether Epstein paid for that leg or whether the visit took place.²⁰

On June 25, 2013 a correspondent asked Lesley Groff, Epstein’s executive assistant, for telephone numbers for a list of “names of scientists that I need to call” which ended with Hawking and “Gerard t’Hooft”; Groff replied that she would get back to them.²¹

On June 23, 2015 a member of Epstein’s office wrote to Krauss, “Jeffrey is asking for Stephen Hawking’s contact details. Might you be able to pass along?” Krauss answered the same afternoon: “I don’t normally give out email addresses, even to friends… but I guess since Jeffrey flew stephen on a plane it is ok.” The address he supplied is redacted, and that evening the assistant asked Epstein whether to pass it to Steven Pinker.²² Krauss’s remark is his own account rather than a travel record; the searches described below returned no flight manifest or passenger list naming Hawking.⁶ A separate thread of June 21 and 23, 2015 records a correspondent asking Epstein for Hawking’s contact details so that a magazine editor could seek an interview, and Epstein replying that the request should go to his assistant directly.²³

The January 2015 claim

On January 11 and 12, 2015 the St. Croix Avis reported that “recent allegations that Britain’s Prince Andrew, Nobel prize-winning physicist Stephen Hawking and prominent lawyer Alan Dershowitz, were among the men in attendance at Epstein’s home during that alleged orgy, have thrown the territory back into the headlines”, and that Dershowitz “and Hawking are accused alongside the Prince, of having sexual relations with a teenage associate of Epstein on the island”.¹³ The report says the coverage it was describing had appeared in newspapers in Washington and New York, on the Daily Beast and the Smoking Gun, and in Britain and Australia; it calls Hawking a Nobel prize winner, which he was not.¹³¹

No complainant has ever publicly accused Hawking, and the unsealed court filings contain no such allegation. Business Insider reported in January 2024 that “Hawking hasn’t been publicly accused of sexual misconduct involving Epstein. And the unsealed documents, from a civil lawsuit Giuffre filed against Maxwell in 2016, do not include any such allegations from Giuffre.”⁹ The Guardian reported the next day that Hawking, “who died in 2018, has not been accused of a crime related to Epstein.”¹⁰

On January 12, 2015 Epstein wrote to Ghislaine Maxwell that she could “issue a reward” to the friends, acquaintances and family of a woman whose name is blacked out in the copy cited, if they would “come forward and help prove her allegations are false”; he went on, “the strongest is the clinton dinner, and the new version in the virgin isalnds that stven hawking partica-ted in an underage orgy”. Maxwell replied, “That’s just seriously bad idea So no I won’t.” Epstein answered, “its supposed to be funny, . your lawyer is an idiot”, and Maxwell wrote, “I have no sense of humour currently..am in a v bad spot”.⁷

The claim also reached a court record. In Edwards and Cassell v. Dershowitz, No. CACE 15-000072 in the Circuit Court for Broward County, Florida, the plaintiffs’ fifth request to produce asked Dershowitz for “Every source of information upon which you have relied in publicly stating” that a complainant, whose name is blacked out in the copy cited, “ever stated that Stephen Hawking was a participant in an orgy.”⁸ In responses filed on December 9, 2015 Dershowitz objected on several grounds and stated that he “did not collect documents that might be responsive to this Request before he made the statement referenced in this Document Request”, adding that he would produce “any documents that Defendant may identify during the course of discovery as relevant to the statement referenced in this Document Request”.⁸ Asked in a later deposition in the same case whether his statements about Hawking and Clinton “come only and directly, if at all, out of some newspaper publishing”, Dershowitz answered, “Those two statements came from newspapers and blogs. But I did not rely on those alone.”²⁴ The same request was renoticed in the deposition papers in that case.²⁵ On December 12, 2017, setting out his answer to a BuzzFeed News reporter who had put sexual-misconduct allegations to him, Krauss wrote: “Starting around the time I defended my friend Jeffrey Epstein from a rash of what I saw as ridiculous and unfounded claims, claims online began to surface about me with a sexual nature. The first I saw online was a claim that Stephen Hawking and I had had an orgy at one of Jeffrey’s properties. If you know anything about my friend Stephen Hawking you will know this is patently ridiculous.”²⁶

Hawking was alive when the claim circulated in 2015 and until his death on March 14, 2018. No statement by him about it, or about Epstein of any kind, appears among the documents cited on this page or was returned by the searches described below, and none can now be given. The searches run for this page covered the released files under the variants “Stephen Hawking”, “Hawking”, “hawking” in combination with “orgy”, “reward”, “submarine”, “little st” and “wheelchair”, and “Confronting Gravity”, and returned no flight manifest, passenger list, invoice, cheque, wire instruction or grant record naming Hawking.⁶

After his death

Hawking died on March 14, 2018. Correspondents wrote to Epstein the same day to ask whether he would attend the funeral and to offer condolences; one wrote, in a message whose printed text carries quoted-printable transmission damage, so that a character lost in the print is supplied here in brackets, “I know that you had worked with him anf that he had [a]ttended some of your conferences in the past.”²⁷²⁸ On the evening of March 14 another correspondent advised Epstein that “If I were your PR person”, he would prepare to release “some photographs or video of Hawking going into the submarine” in or near the Virgin Islands together with a story about a conference organiser and science philanthropist who had asked Hawking what he still wanted to do and then arranged it, followed if the story spread by a second story identifying the organiser as Epstein.²⁹

Related

• People: Lawrence Krauss; Marvin Minsky; Martin Nowak; Lesley Groff; Ghislaine Maxwell; Alan Dershowitz; Brad Edwards; Paul Cassell.
• Entities: Enhanced Education.
• Places: Little Saint James.
• Topics: Epstein and academia; Epstein and academic institutions; Alan Dershowitz litigation.

Footnotes

1. “Professor Stephen Hawking,” University of Cambridge, tribute page. https://www.cam.ac.uk/stephenhawking ↩ ↩² ↩³ ↩⁴ ↩⁵ ↩⁶ ↩⁷ ↩⁸ ↩⁹

2. Article circulated for Epstein, “Science Philanthropist, Jeffrey Epstein, Convenes a Conference of Nobel Laureates to Define Gravity,” p.1. A duplicate of the same article is in the release at https://epstein-data.com/EFTA01105830. https://epstein-data.com/EFTA02005256 ↩ ↩² ↩³

3. Newspaper report on photographs of Hawking on Little Saint James, pp.1-2. The copy in the release carries neither masthead nor date; it reports the publication of new photographs and Buckingham Palace’s denial of the allegations then current, which places it in January 2015. A duplicate is in the release at https://epstein-data.com/EFTA00716439. https://epstein-data.com/EFTA00622762 ↩ ↩² ↩³ ↩⁴ ↩⁵

4. Epstein foundation blog draft headed “Jeffrey Epstein Weebly Blog 3 FREEMAN 11-14-2012,” p.1. https://epstein-data.com/EFTA02032823 ↩ ↩² ↩³ ↩⁴

5. Article circulated for Epstein, “Financier, Jeffrey Epstein, Accelerates the Course of Evolution at Harvard,” printed p.2. https://epstein-data.com/EFTA01961023 ↩ ↩² ↩³ ↩⁴

6. Full-text searches of the released files run September 4, 2026 under the variants “Stephen Hawking” and “Hawking”, and in combination with “orgy”, “reward”, “submarine”, “little st”, “wheelchair” and “Confronting Gravity”, were reviewed for records of payment, travel or attendance. The bare token “Hawking” also returns pages concerning Hawking’s daughter Lucy Hawking, unrelated documents using “hawking” as an ordinary verb, and a surname in a contact list; those are not counted here. ↩ ↩² ↩³ ↩⁴

7. Jeffrey Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell, email exchange of Jan 12, 2015. https://epstein-data.com/EFTA00673798 ↩ ↩² ↩³

8. “Defendant/Counterclaim Plaintiff Alan M. Dershowitz’s Objections and Responses to Plaintiffs’ Fifth Request to Produce,” Edwards and Cassell v. Dershowitz, No. CACE 15-000072 (Fla. 17th Cir. Ct., Broward County), filed Dec 9, 2015, printed pp.2–3. https://epstein-data.com/EFTA00591084 ↩ ↩² ↩³ ↩⁴

9. Grace Eliza Goodwin, “What the unsealed Jeffrey Epstein documents say — and don’t say — about Stephen Hawking,” Business Insider, Jan 4, 2024. https://www.businessinsider.com/stephen-hawking-jeffrey-epstein-documents-unsealed-2024-1 ↩ ↩²

10. Robert Booth, “Prince Andrew, Clinton, Hawking: what do the Epstein documents say about key people?,” The Guardian, Jan 5, 2024. https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2024/jan/05/prince-andrew-clinton-hawking-what-do-the-epstein-documents-say-about-key-people ↩ ↩²

11. “Summary of Enhanced Education,” undated foundation summary, printed pp.1-3; the symposium list is on printed p.2. https://epstein-data.com/EFTA01119775 ↩ ↩² ↩³

12. Email to a colleague at Epstein’s office, copying Epstein, “more photos,” Mar 14, 2012. https://epstein-data.com/EFTA00718969 ↩ ↩²

13. Britney Knight, “No escaping Epstein: Private island Little St. James is at center of scandal in national headlines,” St. Croix Avis, Jan 11-12, 2015, p.1. https://epstein-data.com/EFTA01192696 ↩ ↩² ↩³

14. Article circulated for Epstein, “Maverick Hedge Funder, Jeffrey Epstein, Funds the First Humanoids in Berlin,” p.1. https://epstein-data.com/EFTA01949601 ↩ ↩²

15. Draft for an Epstein website headed “Jeffrey Epstein Wordpress Lander FREEMAN 11-14-2012,” p.1. https://epstein-data.com/EFTA01108090 ↩

16. John Carney, “Jeffrey Epstein and Those Nobel Prize Winning Orgiasts,” financial-news blog item posted Aug 1, 2006, at p.9 of a printout of that blog held in the release; it links to “Physicists Debate Gravity at St. Thomas Symposium,” St. Thomas Source. https://epstein-data.com/EFTA00214238 ↩

17. James B. Stewart, Matthew Goldstein and Jessica Silver-Greenberg, “Jeffrey Epstein Hoped to Seed Human Race With His DNA,” New York Times, Jul 31, 2019, reproduced in the Southern District of New York news clips for that date, pp.2-3. https://epstein-data.com/EFTA00018441 ↩

18. Victoria Bekiempis, “Jeffrey Epstein boasted of spurious celebrity connections, documents show,” The Guardian, Jan 4, 2024. https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2024/jan/04/jeffrey-epstein-list-celebrity-name-documents ↩

19. Jason Wilson, “‘The smart, the rich, the powerful’: Epstein associated with Silicon Valley elite years after his release from prison,” The Guardian, Feb 3, 2026. https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026/feb/03/epstein-silicon-valley ↩

20. Lawrence Krauss to Epstein, “feb event and april event,” Nov 29, 2010, and Epstein’s reply of Nov 30, 2010. https://epstein-data.com/EFTA00776842 ↩ ↩²

21. Lesley Groff, “Re: list of names,” Jun 25, 2013, quoting the request of the same day. https://epstein-data.com/EFTA02134639 ↩

22. Email to Epstein forwarding the exchange with Lawrence Krauss, “Stephen Hawking/Steven Pinker…”, Jun 23, 2015. https://epstein-data.com/EFTA02076078 ↩

23. Email thread, “trying to reach S. Hawking,” Jun 21 and 23, 2015, printed p.2. https://epstein-data.com/EFTA02076153 ↩

24. Alan Dershowitz deposition testimony, Edwards and Cassell v. Dershowitz, No. CACE 15-000072, transcript p.574, printed p.113 (Bates EFTA01137906). https://epstein-data.com/EFTA01137794 ↩

25. “Re-Notice of Taking Continued Video Deposition Duces Tecum,” Edwards and Cassell v. Dershowitz, No. CACE 15-000072, request 47, at printed p.12. https://epstein-data.com/EFTA01099248 ↩

26. Lawrence Krauss, “Please comment…”, Dec 12, 2017, quoting the reporter’s question of Dec 11, 2017. A further version of his answer, sent in an exchange with Epstein the same day, is at https://epstein-data.com/EFTA02550063. https://epstein-data.com/EFTA00927556 ↩

27. Email to Epstein, “Stephen Hawking,” Mar 14, 2018. https://epstein-data.com/EFTA02506476 ↩

28. James P. McGee to Epstein, “Condolences,” Mar 14, 2018, 11:28 p.m. local time; the export header stamps the message Mar 15, 2018, 3:28 a.m., but the sibling copies at https://epstein-data.com/EFTA02506947 and https://epstein-data.com/EFTA02506137 quote it in local time as sent the evening of Mar 14. https://epstein-data.com/EFTA02507820 ↩

29. Email to Epstein, “Hawking,” Mar 14, 2018. The message carries quoted-printable transmission damage in the print itself and is paraphrased here rather than quoted through it. https://epstein-data.com/EFTA02507693 ↩