Epstein Funded Travel for India's Leading Physicists

The email names seven Indian scientists and credits the travel support with helping “extraordinarily productive” researchers working in quantum gravity, string theory and black hole physics.

BY PC Bureau

July 18, 2026: Recently unsealed court records linked to convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, along with a resurfaced 2018 internal email, have drawn fresh attention to a $100,000 travel fund that supported seven leading theoretical physicists at the Tata Institute of Fundamental Research (TIFR), Mumbai, around 2003.

The fund, established in 2003 and administered through Harvard University’s Department of Physics, was intended to support international travel and research collaborations for TIFR scientists working in string theory and related areas of theoretical physics.

The 2018 email, written by renowned Harvard physicist Andrew Strominger to economist Lawrence Summers and later forwarded to Epstein, outlined the impact of the fund and praised the scientific accomplishments of the researchers whose travel it financed.

The scientists named in the email are Sandip Trivedi, Ashoke Sen, Gautam Mandal, Spenta Wadia, Shiraz Minwalla, Sunil Mukhi, and Atish Dabholkar.

Strominger described the group as “extraordinarily productive,” citing their pioneering work in quantum gravity, string theory and black hole physics. He also noted that several of them later received prestigious international honours, including the World Academy of Sciences (TWAS) Prize, Infosys Prize, Fundamental Physics Prize, and the Dirac Medal. He reportedly described the TIFR researchers as delivering one of the highest levels of “intellectual output per dollar.”

The documents contain no allegation of wrongdoing against the scientists, and indicate that the funding was intended solely to support academic travel and research collaborations.

The email also mentions that Sandip Trivedi was appointed Director of TIFR in 2015 and that Spenta Wadia went on to become the founding director of the International Centre for Theoretical Sciences (ICTS) in Bengaluru.

“The travel fund supported by Jeffrey Epstein around 2003 supported extraordinary scientists at the prestigious Tata Institute for Fundamental Research in Mumbai,” the email states.

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The document resurfaced after social commentator Madhu Purnima Kishwar shared it on X on Friday, questioning the nature of the funding and expressing surprise that eminent Indian scientists had benefited from an Epstein-backed programme.

Epstein cultivated ties with numerous scientists, universities and research institutions through donations and philanthropic initiatives, years before the full extent of his criminal conduct became public.

Epstein died in a New York jail in 2019 while awaiting trial on federal sex-trafficking charges. His death was officially ruled a suicide.

The resurfaced document, bearing a U.S. Department of Justice watermark, appears to be among records released as part of investigations into Epstein’s network and has reignited online debate over the financier’s extensive connections with the global scientific and academic community.

As of now, neither TIFR nor any of the scientists named in the email has publicly commented on the document.