Benedict Gross

Benedict H. "Dick" Gross (1950, South Orange, New Jersey to December 2025, California) was an American number theorist and administrator at Harvard University, where he was dean of Harvard College from 2003 to 2007 and later chair of the mathematics department. The Program for Evolutionary Dynamics, funded in 2003 by Jeffrey Epstein's 6.5 million dollar gift, described itself as established by President Lawrence H. Summers "following an imaginative proposal by Jeffrey Epstein and Benedict Gross." In December 2013, after Epstein's conviction, Gross asked the university to reconsider its bar on Epstein's gifts, and in 2017 Martin Nowak asked Epstein whether he could make Gross Harvard's next president.¹²³⁴

Career

Gross entered Harvard as a 17-year-old freshman in 1967, graduated in 1971 and earned his Ph.D. there in 1978. He taught at Princeton and Brown before returning to Harvard in 1985. He received a MacArthur Fellowship in 1986 and the American Mathematical Society's Cole Prize in 1987. He served as dean of undergraduate education from 2002 to 2003 and dean of Harvard College from 2003 to 2007, held the George Vasmer Leverett Professorship for nearly twenty years, and was named a Harvard College Professor in 2011. He later chaired the mathematics department. He died at his home in California in December 2025, aged 75.¹²

The Program for Evolutionary Dynamics

Epstein's 2003 gift of 6.5 million dollars, his largest to Harvard, established the Program for Evolutionary Dynamics under Nowak, whom Harvard recruited from the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, where Epstein had already funded his work. The program's original website stated that it "was established in 2003 by Harvard University President Lawrence H. Summers following an imaginative proposal by Jeffrey Epstein and Benedict Gross," under the auspices of the Dean of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences, William Kirby. The gift paid for a separate facility in a leased building at One Brattle Square in Harvard Square.³

The 2013 Request

President Drew Faust decided no later than November 2008 that Harvard would accept no more gifts from Epstein, but recorded the decision nowhere. In December 2013 Gross, as chair of the mathematics department, and the divisional dean Jeremy Bloxham asked Michael D. Smith, Dean of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences, to petition the Gift Policy Committee to reconsider, writing that "Epstein has served his time for his crime, and that his wealth has been obtained legally." Smith declined. In March 2014 Gross told Nowak there was "a temporary hold on contributions from Jeffrey Epstein, although I hope it will be lifted by summer." In December 2014 Nowak asked Gross "confidentially" whether there was "an update concerning Jeffrey being an acceptable donor for Harvard?" Epstein gave nothing further directly; donors he introduced, including Leon Black, paid the program's rent from 2010 to 2015.⁵

The 2017 Email

On June 15, 2017, the day after Faust announced that she would step down, Nowak wrote to Epstein: "drew faust (harvard president) will step down end of the academic year can you bring summers back? or dick gross?" No reply appears in the record.⁴⁶