Disclaimer: This article is a personal analytical commentary based on publicly available information, including the Netflix documentary "Jeffrey Epstein: Filthy Rich", official reports from the Office of the Inspector General (OIG), and public legislative records of the "Jeffrey Epstein Transparency Act". This writing is intended for educational and social commentary purposes only. It does not contain any non-public or classified information, nor does it intend to defame any specific living individuals. This was written in collaboration with Gemini. Originally written in English. 

As previously mentioned, Epstein had what seemed to be a very “normal” and conventional upbringing, whatever “normal” means these days, and had a very normal, unremarkable relationship with his parents and his brother. By unremarkable, I don’t mean that their relationships were bad, I just mean that there wasn’t anything out of the ordinary that was worth-noting in the materials I found. What I didn’t mention though, was that academically, he was in fact, somewhat of a math genius. 

According to his peers and teachers from high school, he had strong intuition when it came to numbers, complicated formulas and abstract concepts. He didn’t have to try hard to memorize them, he just “got them” intuitively. He was later accepted into New York University Courant Institute, which was and still is highly competitive. It is ranked #1 in the U.S. News for applied math, which topped MIT, Harvard, and Princeton. Its core courses included Partial Differential Equations, which I did take in college, but didn’t fully understand at the time, Computational Mathematics and Simulation, such as Fluid Dynamics, which is a study of understanding how air flows over an airplane wing or how blood moves through arteries, and Climate Modeling, which I thought was impossible to predict since it’s all chaos systems, but apparently you can predict long-term weather patterns though, and the impact of global warming by simulating atmospheric and oceanic interactions. On top of that, the school was especially good at Financial Mathematics, and The Courant Institute was one of the first institutions in the world to establish a formal Master’s program in this discipline. Many of the top quantitative analysts at elite Wall Street hedge funds are Courant alumni, who apparently use these mathematical frameworks to find tiny market inefficiencies and execute high-frequency trades. 

At the Courant Institute, Epstein was surrounded by some of the most rigorous mathematical minds in the world. While he was undoubtedly bright, he was also described by those who knew him then as someone who lacked the patience for formal proofs and the grinding work of high-level academia. This makes a lot of sense to me, it coincides with his eagerness to take short cuts and unwilling to take the slower but steadier route. This trait of him shows up repeatedly throughout his life, and I would say this is the prime reason that he moved up so fast, combined with the fact that he was willing to do things that people with good consciousness were unwilling to do.  

It was unclear why he dropped out of NYU, I would suspect it had to do with some sort of misconduct, but I couldn’t find much on record. Yet he was offered a second chance at UIUC, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. It seems like a strange switch to me, one that I doubt he was willing to make. For someone who seems to be into the glamor of the real world, moving from Manhattan to Urbana-Champaign couldn’t have been an experience he was psyched about, at least from my point of view.

However, he didn't finish his degree at UIUC either. He was only there for one semester, I’m assuming that he hated it, during which he secured a teaching position at The Dalton School. It is unclear how he got the job, since Dalton is regarded as one of the most prestigious, exclusive, and academically rigorous private schools in the United States, which was located on the Upper East Side of Manhattan. People call this the Ivy Preparatory School. 

I’ll go into a little more detail about this school. Unlike traditional schools that rely solely on lectures and fixed schedules, Dalton operates on a specific pedagogical model created by its founder, Helen Parkhurst. The "Dalton Plan" consists of three pillars: The House, The Assignment, and The Lab. At Dalton, every student belongs to a "House", which is a small peer group led by a House Adviser who mentors them throughout their years, focusing on social and emotional development. On top of that, students are given monthly contracts or "assignments" that outline their academic goals, encouraging them to manage their time and workload independently. Last but not least, the most famous part of the school is "Lab", which refers to dedicated time where students meet one-on-one or in small groups with teachers to dive deeper into subjects, foster intellectual curiosity, and receive personalized feedback. It sounds a lot like Hogwarts doesn’t it? From what I could gather, tuition was around $60k a year, twice as much as most state universities’ tuition

I can’t imagine someone like Epstein who didn’t have the patience to finish either of his degrees to have the patience to teach, or is it because he enjoyed being around children? I don’t know. Yet he was hired by Donald Barr, who led the school at the time, despite Epstein being a 21-year-old college dropout with no degree. He was hired to teach high-level Physics and Mathematics. He must have seen something in Epstein, maybe it was the eagerness for the job, maybe it was his geniusness, or charisma. I hate to admit this, but these kinds of people tend to be extremely charismatic and likable, very complicated characters. 

As privileged of a school Dalton was, you can imagine the kind of kids that went to that school and who their parents were. That social ecosystem led him to meet Alan C. Greenberg, also known on Wall Street as “Ace”. At the time, Greenberg was the rising star and future CEO of Bear Stearns. His son was a student at Dalton, and Epstein was his math teacher. At parent-teacher meetings or social school events, Epstein did not act like a typical academic. He was brash, wore expensive-looking suits, and spoke about the markets with a confidence that caught Greenberg's attention.

Greenberg was impressed by Epstein’s "mathematical prodigy" persona. In the mid-1970s, Wall Street was just beginning to realize that advanced mathematics and computers could be used to gain an edge in trading—a field now known as "quantitative analysis." Greenberg saw Epstein as a young, hungry "math whiz" who could help the firm navigate these new complexities. 

However, Epstein only taught there for two years, and was asked to leave by the  headmaster, Donald Barr. The reason is unclear, but according to interviews with former staff, he did not leave voluntarily. Gemini says the reasons for his dismissal could fall into two categories: inappropriate behavior with students, and a “clash of culture”. Several former students and faculty members have since come forward alleging that Epstein’s behavior toward female students was "unsettling" or "inappropriate." He reportedly held private meetings with girls and made comments that crossed professional boundaries. At the same time,  Epstein’s brash, arrogant personality and his tendency to act as if he were superior to the academic environment created friction with the administration. Donald Barr was a strict disciplinarian, and Epstein’s "prodigy" act began to wear thin.

Yet being ousted by the school wasn’t the end of it, it only takes one person to believe he’s a good person to help him to get a job, and that’s exactly what happened. Alan "Ace" Greenberg introduced Epstein to Bear Stearns, who hired Epstein as a junior assistant to a floor trader. It seemed that was the first job that was right up his alley. 

(will continue in the next post)