Lawrence Krauss

Lawrence M. Krauss (born 1954) is an American-Canadian theoretical physicist and popular-science author who, while at Case Western Reserve University, organized a 2006 physics conference in the United States Virgin Islands paid for by Jeffrey Epstein, and who from 2008 ran the Origins Project at Arizona State University, which took Epstein money from December 2010 to April 2017 and 2 million dollars from Epstein's client Leon Black. He publicly defended Epstein in 2011, consulted him in 2018 about how to answer sexual-misconduct allegations, and agreed that October to retire from Arizona State after the university substantiated several of them. Krauss denies harassing anyone.¹²³

Physicist and Public Atheist

Krauss rose to prominence in the 1990s through popular books and lectures on physics and atheism, beginning with The Physics of Star Trek (1995) and later A Universe from Nothing (2012). He taught at Case Western Reserve before moving to Arizona State in 2008, where he founded the Origins Project to stage public events on "the origins of the universe, life, and social systems" with scientists, intellectuals and celebrities. The project relied heavily on donations from foundations and wealthy individuals. He was a contributor to John Brockman's Edge.¹³⁴⁵

The 2006 Gravity Conference

In March 2006 Krauss convened "Confronting Gravity," a conference of about twenty physicists in St. Thomas funded by Epstein's foundation. Krauss had pitched it as "a small and rather exclusive workshop" with all expenses paid, naming as invitees Stephen Hawking, the 2004 Nobel laureates David Gross and Frank Wilczek, the 1999 laureate Gerard 't Hooft and Kip Thorne. "To get good people, you've got to have a hook," Krauss said in 2026. The announcement promised time to "relax on the beach, and take a trip to the nearby private island retreat of the science philanthropist Jeffrey Epstein." Epstein told the St. Thomas Source that "there is no agenda except fun and physics, and that's fun with a capital 'F.'" The physicists stayed at the Ritz-Carlton, and the program ended with a submarine dive for Hawking and a boat trip to a barbecue on Little St. James, where a guide told them, "Don't go wandering off into the island."¹

Alan Guth of MIT recalled that "we probably never saw him without three or four young women." Jim Peebles recalled five to ten young women at a coffee break: "I can only tell you they were younger than the youngest women in our meeting. . . . Were they 15 or 30? I have no idea." Krauss told NPR the young women were Hawking's nurses. Palm Beach police were then completing their investigation of Epstein, who was indicted four months later. In a 2017 text Epstein wrote that when Hawking "came to my island. and said his dream was to go diving . . . i [duct-taped] his head to a high back chair and loaded him in a private sub, great fun," and he later listed the conference among his top five professional achievements. In 2012 someone whose name is redacted told Epstein they were "rehas[h]ing an article . . . on the gravity conference," and a press release on the six-year-old event followed the next month.¹

't Hooft told BuzzFeed News he had had no contact with Epstein since 2006; Wilczek said, "I did not receive financial support from Mr. Epstein. I did attend conferences and events which he financed in part." Epstein foundation websites nonetheless listed Wilczek as a funding recipient, and MIT's investigators found no such donation.⁶⁷

The Origins Project and the Black Money

Krauss said Epstein contacted him on his 2009 release from jail and told him the "experience had changed his view of the world, and he no longer wanted to make money. . . . He just wanted to support science." In late 2010 Krauss planned an Origins Project board meeting in the Virgin Islands for which Justice Department documents list Guth and the paleontologist Neil Shubin as expected attendees; it was called off, for reasons the documents do not state, after Epstein expressed disappointment with its organization. In 2011 Krauss told The Daily Beast: "As a scientist I always judge things on empirical evidence and he always has women ages 19 to 23 around him, but I've never seen anything else, so as a scientist, my presumption is that whatever the problems were I would believe him over other people. . . . I don't feel tarnished in any way by my relationship with Jeffrey. I feel raised by it."¹⁶

Records obtained by BuzzFeed News under Arizona's public records law show that Epstein's Virgin Islands foundation Enhanced Education paid the Origins Project 250,000 dollars between December 2010 and April 2017; Enhanced Education appears to have filed with the Internal Revenue Service only once, for 2002. The same records show 2 million dollars in personal gifts from Leon and Debra Black in 2014 and 2015, and one Origins accounting entry listing Epstein's employer as "Leon D. Black, Enhanced Education." Epstein attended the project's fifth-anniversary gala in 2014, where he was photographed with Krauss and Steven Pinker. In February 2017 he appeared at a meal after an Origins workshop on artificial intelligence; Shahar Avin of Cambridge's Centre for the Study of Existential Risk recalled that "he showed up with two young East European-looking women," that Krauss introduced him only as "my friend Jeffrey," and that "we asked him who he was and he wouldn't say." Avin said Epstein made offensive remarks about race, intelligence and athletic ability. Between 2012 and 2017 Black paid Epstein about 158 million dollars for tax and estate-planning advice.²⁶⁸⁹

The Harassment Investigation

On February 22, 2018, BuzzFeed News published an account of more than a decade of sexual-misconduct allegations against Krauss, and Arizona State reopened an investigation. Provost Mark Searle's findings, released under a public records request, substantiated that Krauss grabbed a woman's breast at a 2016 meeting in Australia, touched the thigh of the atheist activist Cristina Rad at a 2011 meeting in Switzerland, suggested a threesome to a woman discussing employment at the Origins Project, made negative comments about pregnancy and parental leave, looked a student worker up and down while commenting on her clothing, discussed strip clubs with staff, and showed staff nude fan photographs. Krauss admitted telling a female employee in 2012 that she should "take one for the team" and date a donor. Searle also found that Krauss and another staff member failed to report that a donor who had taken a romantic interest in an Origins employee sent her more than fifty messages after she asked him to stop. Searle wrote: "It is inconceivable how a faculty member in the course of carrying out his work responsibilities could believe that the conduct would ever be appropriate." The 33-page determinations letter and Krauss's retirement letter are posted on DocumentCloud.³¹⁰

A dean recommended Krauss's dismissal on October 8, 2018. On October 19 he agreed to retire, and his retirement took effect in 2019. Krauss told BuzzFeed News he had given the university "documentary evidence, including witness statements and photographs, that falsified claims and undermined the credibility of claimants," and stated publicly, "I have never harassed or assaulted anyone." His October 20 letter called BuzzFeed News an "online tabloid" and cited "violations of due process, disregard for evidence, discrimination, [and] bias."¹³

While the allegations were pending, Krauss exchanged dozens of messages and emails with Epstein seeking advice on how to respond. "This is your life and future. I would not be cavalier as you write," Epstein texted him. Krauss ended one exchange, "Thanks for everything Jeffrey." Krauss told NPR in 2026 that in fifteen years of friendship Epstein "not once . . . ever sa[id], 'Hey, I've got a young woman,'" and that "Jeffrey was interested in interesting people."¹

After Arizona State

Arizona State closed the Origins Project in 2018 and converted it into the ASU Interplanetary Initiative. It returned 25,000 dollars in unspent funds to Enhanced Education and about 460,000 dollars to the Blacks at their request; spokesperson Katie Paquet said, "we believe we have been successful in closing all connections to Epstein and his affiliated entities." Krauss relaunched the Origins Project as an independent foundation, taking some staff, which said it "has not received donations from that individual or any of his charitable foundations." Arizona State first reported only the 250,000 dollars; the Black gifts surfaced in August 2019 through the accounting records.²⁸