Nobel winner quits Columbia U. brain institute

Dr. Richard Axel, a Nobel Prize-winning scientist, said he is stepping down as co-director of Columbia University’s Zuckerman Mind Brain Behavior Institute on the heels of his association with notorious sex predator Jeffrey Epstein drawing public attention.

“My past association with Jeffrey Epstein was a serious error in judgment, which I deeply regret,” Axel, 79, said in a statement on Tuesday.

“I apologize for compromising the trust of my friends, students, and colleagues,” Axel said.

“I recognize the problems this has caused, and I will work to restore this trust. What has emerged about Epstein’s appalling conduct, the harm that he has caused to so many people, makes my association with him all the more painful and inexcusable.”

Axel has not been accused of wrongdoing in connection with his friendship with Epstein, who died in August 2019 from suicide, weeks after being arrested on federal child sex trafficking charges.

But Axel is mentioned in multiple emails and other documents released by the Department of Justice in January as having been in contact and dining with Epstein.

Axel has been a Columbia University professor for 53 years, and will continue his lab’s research at the Zuckerman institute, he said. Axel, in his statement, said he will resign as an investigator from Columbia’s Howard Hughes Medical Institute

Axel won the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 2004 with Linda Buck “for their discoveries of odorant receptors and the organization of the olfactory system,” the prize website notes.

In a December 2007 New York magazine profile of Epstein, Axel is quoted saying about him, “He has the ability to make connections that other minds can’t make.”

“He is extremely smart and probing. He can very quickly acquire information to think about a problem and also to identify biological problems without having all the data that a scientist would have,” Axel said in the article. “He also has an extremely short attention span.”

The article, which was published as Epstein faced a pending indictment for soliciting prostitution in Florida, notes that Axel met Epstein “during the early biotech days of the eighties.”

Axel joins a growing list of people who have lost positions or been subpoenaed due to their relationships with Epstein.

Emails and other documents contained in the DOJ’s Epstein files database show that the friendship between Axel and Epstein continued for years after Epstein served 13 months in jail following his guilty plea in Florida state court to soliciting an underage girl for prostitution.

Columbia, in its own statement on Tuesday, said, “The University has seen no evidence that Dr. Axel violated any University policy or the law. However, Dr. Axel made clear that in light of this past association, and the continued fallout from the release of DOJ files, he felt it appropriate to relinquish his position as co-director.

“The University agrees with this decision, while at the same time recognizing his extraordinary contributions to the University and his dedication to his colleagues, to his students, and to science,” the university said.