. . . at least according to this post from Quillette and response from Steve Stewart-Williams. And, as I wrote this short post, his Wikipedia bio was updated to show that he died on March 12 at 83.
RIP Robert Trivers (1943–2026), one of the boldest and most influential thinkers in evolutionary biology.
A giant in the field—whose ideas reshaped how we understand cooperation, conflict, and human nature. https://t.co/N4dV7cOSrk pic.twitter.com/xzWNKTi8Q2
— Quillette (@Quillette) March 15, 2026
I knew the guy, though not well, and he was a complex individual, capable of making great advances in evolutionary theory (early in his career) but also to self-sabotage. I have stories about him, but I can’t really recount them here. I’ll just put up the first two paragraphs of his Wikipedia bio in lieu of an obituary. Unfortunately, it shows he was in the Epstein files (but so was I):
Robert Ludlow “Bob” Trivers born February 19, 1943) is an American evolutionary biologist and sociobiologist. Trivers proposed the theories of reciprocal altruism (1971), parental investment (1972), facultative sex ratio determination (1973), and parent–offspring conflict (1974). He has also contributed by explaining self-deception as an adaptive evolutionary strategy (first described in 1976) and discussing intragenomic conflict.
Some of Trivers’ work was funded by Jeffrey Epstein, and Trivers later defended the convicted criminal’s reputation.[3] In 2015 he was suspended from Rutgers University after he refused to teach an assigned course.
If he really died 3 days ago, wouldn’t there be some confirmation from reliable news sources?
I don’t know. If he didn’t die I’ll apologize and remove the article. The news may not have been made public until now. I’m betting that yes, he did die.
The correspondence between Trivers and Epstein was particularly vile.
I have no idea what went on. Given that it was Trivers, I wouldn’t be surprised.
The interesting thing with Epstein, he seems to have collected people of eclectic influence like some people collect stamps.
I have had mixed experience with Trivers. I was incredibly impressed with his early theoretical contributions, as well as with his paper with Hope Hare (1976) using haplodiploid insects to test kin selection theory. His 1985 book Social Evolution was perhaps the clearest exposition of sociobiology in its day. I met him twice. The first time was when I was applying to graduate schools in 1977. I was living in Boston and visited him in his office at Harvard. He was gracious and supportive but was about to leave Harvard, which at that time rarely promoted assistant professors to tenured positions. A couple of years later, when I was a PhD student at Princeton, he came to give a departmental seminar. I was among a group of students who accompanied him to a lunch at the Princeton faculty club. That was a bizarre experience. As hard as we students tried to get him talking about science, he spent the first half of the lunch talking about how he had relied upon Jack Daniels to help him write his early classic papers. Then he spent the second half of the lunch talking about how he moved on to rely upon marijuana to help him write. It was truly strange.
And by the way Wikipedia lists a death date but provides no other info about his death.
Yes, I once helped host him here; someone had invited him on the condition that he not use drugs publicly during his visit. He gave a seminar, and my job was to accompany him from the seminar to one of many one-on-one appointments with faculty. As soon as we left the building he pulled out a huge joint and lit it up.
But nobody can deny that he made hugs contributions to evolutionary biology.
I asked Grok if Trivers reported any mental illness, and it told me this:
Grok gives references, but I won’t add them.
There are different reasons that a professor may have a problem with teaching an assigned class, but the article about it from Wikipedia (https://www.nj.com/education/2014/02/rutgers_suspends_top_anthropology_professor_for_allegedly_refusing_to_teach_report_says.html) makes me rather sympathetic both toward him and the university. He mainly did not know the subject so he wasn’t qualified to teach it (!) But of course under normal circumstances one is given months, even a year, to prepare a new course.
Trivers had his problems, but it’s sad to see a giant of the field lost. I guess it could be argued we lost him when he stopped making advances. I respect his apparent dedication to honesty in getting one of his own papers retracted when he became convinced his coauthors had fabricated data, although it took him years.
Sad to hear. I didn’t know the man, but I knew his early theoretical work on reciprocal altruism and related topics. Groundbreaking stuff.
So sad to learn of the death of this brilliant and pioneering scientist. I too hosted him, during a seminar visit to the University of Georgia. At an evening get-together at a faculty member’s house, Trivers startled many in the room by folding and then smoking a very large marijuana joint. It didn’t detract at all from his insightful discourse on a paper that we had all read.
I’m still having trouble coming to grips with this unhappy news. Trivers probably influenced my thinking and writing more than did any other biologist (with the possible exception of Richard Dawkins). Bob’s intellectual footprints can be found all over several of my books, including the one on pregnancy (heavy parental investment and sexual selection theory), the genetic gods, and inside the human genome (intragenomic conflict).
In this house Robert Trivers is a hero! – to channel Tony Soprano.
I thought he was excellent, big fan. I read his stuff from the endnotes in The Selfish Gene and followed him/his writing for decades.
Last I saw was an interview (I think with Jordan Peterson) when he seemed to be failing a bit, mentally. Maybe 3 years ago?
(tired sigh) – The Epstein take is, as all takes with Retarded Epsteinology Moral Panic, predictably stupid. He was spit balling, theorizing in a gruesome manner with a guy who had donated to Rutgers and lead the conversation thusly. They weren’t friends or associate’s by the correspondence I’ve seen.
D.A.
NYC
Here are comments Trivers apparently made about Epstein’s initial conviction and sentence, as reported by Reuters:
That last comment is pretty disturbing, and I think being concerned about it amounts to more than mere moral panic.
Also, a rare annoyance here: given the acknowledged genius of the guy, is his drug taking particularly relevant? I hope my life’s achievement isn’t remembered by the fact I might enjoy illegal drugs.
Trivers was a wild man – (they made a movie about him with s/t like that as the title), with bonkers political opinions sure, who people are trying to smear.
I didn’t know he’d even died. Twitter/X gonna make me angry this afternoon.
D.A.
NYC
As a UC Santa Cruz undergrad in the early 1980s, I had the good fortune to take a year’s worth of Animal Behavior courses from Trivers. He had written the memorable forward to the first edition of the Selfish Gene and it was an assigned text. The brilliant ideas and writings of the two professors, Trivers and Dawkins, changed many lives and influenced worldviews, including mine, for which I am very grateful. Trivers was the most intense and interesting person I’ve ever had lengthy exposure to. His extemporaneous lectures were free-flowing and entertaining, but meaty. As a young college student I was so enthralled, I tape-recorded the lectures, the only courses I did so in my long education journey to getting an MD. I still have the cassettes! What an interesting and impactful life!
I’ll read his obit in a minute, but I wonder if he died in Jamaica? He had a house there, as well as his modest NJ house, as he had a wife (maybe two, sequentially?) who was from there.
He said he liked black girls and he was a big booster for Jamaica.
hahah He was also an honorary member of the Black Panthers.
Wild dude.
D.A.
NYC
Steve Stewart-Williams tweeted about Trivers’ death. Someone commented on that tweet, “He [Trivers] was a member of the Oakland Black Panthers. Huey Newton’s thesis adviser. And Newton was godfather to one of his daughters.” I never met him so no idea if any of that is true.
https://x.com/wildiris19/status/2033195126085050456
Didn’t know the guy from a bar of soap but now I realize as I’ve journeyed my way to atheism and a rabid evolutionist, his ideas have been bouncing around in my head for years.
He helped me make sense of what we are.
Goodbye Robert Trivers.
I am only familiar with Robert Trivers through Robert Wright’s “The Moral Animal”.
And Trivers’ book The Folly of Fools. I thought Trivers’ book showed it had a best-by date.
The wiki entry you linked to has no mention of Trivers’ death.
i did not keep up with evolutionary biology, although I know it would be intriguing to see the progress of the discipline, and to gauge my own reactions, so many years later. I took Trivers’ class at Santa Cruz. He was generous with his office hours, and he was open to disagreement and to people different from him. That is, I could not wrap my head around how evolution started, and felt that there had to be a Maker. i would speak with him and a graduate student or two, never minding that he might get high, and he not minding that I was someone who did not get high. Like other friends of mine, he seemed only to get better with his arguments as he smoked. I enjoyed our conversations and felt taken seriously. I never felt that he looked at me as someone he might seduce, although I was a white woman. He just never gave predatory vibes nor spoke in any way that made me feel uncomfortable.
He was very laid-back, except in debate.
Bret Weinstein and Heather Haying spoke about him and his connection with Epstein. it seemed that many listeners felt that they were deluded, and that he must have been a pervert to have answered an email as he did to Epstein. Well, my experience says no, also. He could just argue an argument.
Anyway, I found him gentle, intelligent and open-hearted. I had been praying for him since I heard he was in hospice, which was a couple of weeks later when I randomly checked out Dark Horse after a long time. Anyway, I know he touched his family and his students and me, and I do hope he rests in peace. Btw, I was not religious as an undergrad, but I suppose I had a ground sense that there had to be a Creator. He wasn’t gloves off with me because I came from a religious perspective.