A leading molecular biologist who won the Nobel prize for his work studying how the human brain processes smells has stepped down from a prestigious post at Columbia University over his ties to Jeffrey Epstein.
Richard Axel said in a statement that he will resign as a co-director of the Zuckerman Mind Brain Behavior Institute to focus on his own research and teaching.
He is the latest in a string of public figures in the U.S. and Europe — including academic leaders — who have stepped aside from senior positions after their links to Epstein were revealed in the millions of files related to the disgraced financier released by the Justice Department.
Axel was a long-standing contact of Epstein's and appears in or is mentioned in more than 900 of those files, which show the two men were communicating after Epstein was convicted of soliciting a minor for prostitution in 2008.
"My past association with Jeffrey Epstein was a serious error in judgment, which I deeply regret. I apologize for compromising the trust of my friends, students, and colleagues," Axel wrote.
He added: "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."
In a separate statement, Columbia said it was grateful for Axel's contributions and leadership and added that he had not broken university policy or any criminal laws.
"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 said, adding that it agrees with his decision.
In addition, Axel, who has been a professor at Columbia for more than 50 years, is stepping down as an investigator at the Howard Hughes Medical Institute, which will fund other members to complete his work there.
Axel won the Nobel Prize for physiology or medicine in 2004, sharing it with Linda B. Buck for their 1991 research that identified 1,000 separate genes that allow humans to detect more than 10,000 different smells.
Epstein was accused in a 2019 indictment of sex-trafficking minors. He was found dead by apparent suicide in a federal jail in New York in August 2019.
