Martin Andreas Nowak (born April 7, 1965, in Vienna, Austria) is a prominent Austrian-born mathematician, biologist, and evolutionary theorist, a naturalized U.S. citizen, and a professor of mathematics and biology at Harvard University. He earned his doctorate in mathematics from the University of Vienna in 1989, following studies in mathematics and physics. After early career positions at the University of Oxford and Princeton University, he joined Harvard in 1998. Nowak is the founder and director of Harvard's Program for Evolutionary Dynamics, where his research focuses on evolutionary game theory, the evolution of cooperation, language, cancer dynamics, and viral evolution (including significant work on HIV and COVID-19). He has authored over 400 scientific papers and several influential books, including 'Evolutionary Dynamics' (2006) and 'SuperCooperators' (2011), establishing him as a leading figure in applying mathematical models to biological and social sciences.

Nowak's career has intersected with notable controversies. Between 1998 and 2008, he accepted substantial funding from Jeffrey Epstein for his Program for Evolutionary Dynamics, which Harvard returned about $6.5 million of in 2020 amid scrutiny. This association drew criticism for linking academic research to Epstein's network, though Nowak defended the funding as supporting legitimate science without knowledge of Epstein's crimes at the time. Additionally, in 2010, Nowak faced academic backlash over a controversial paper co-authored with E.O. Wilson in Nature on the evolution of eusociality in insects, which was accused of mathematical errors and prompted formal concern from the journal, sparking debates within evolutionary biology.

Nowak continues to influence interdisciplinary fields, bridging mathematics, biology, and social sciences, with research implications for understanding human cooperation, disease spread, and societal dynamics, while his Epstein ties highlight ethical questions in scientific funding and networks of power.