Jeffrey Epstein boasted about his ties to prominent scientific researchers — and pulling strings at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology — in a rare interview two years ago.

The multimillionaire pedophile waxed poetic about science in a Skype chat with a Science magazine reporter in September 2017.

Excerpts from the 80-minute interview — likely one of Epstein’s last before his jailhouse suicide in August — were published Thursday.

“I’m not more than a hobbyist in science but money I understand, [and] I’m a pretty good mathematician,” Epstein told the reporter from his Upper East Side mansion.

The interview was the result of Epstein’s publicists reaching out to the publication after a piece on President Trump’s science budget ran.

The disgraced financier — who donated to universities including MIT and Harvard — told the journalist that his philanthropic goal was to make up for “the Trump administration cutting back on pure research.”

He also said he was attracted to MIT because of its unique student body.

“I would say 25 percent of the kids there are autistic, on the spectrum,” Epstein said. “They don’t really work in groups. They’re not taking classes. They’re not giving teaching assignments. They don’t have lots to do, they’re there to think.”

He said that appealed to him because “it’s my natural bent to move toward the maverick and rebels who don’t fit in. They were probably overlooked [in school]. They were definitely never class president.”

Epstein also spent the interview name-dropping his powerful pals, including late MIT professor Marvin Minsky — who was accused of sleeping with one of Epstein’s “sex slaves.”

“As you might know, I was very close to Marvin Minsky for quite a long time [and] I funded some of Marvin’s projects,” Epstein said.

Epstein, who was convicted in 2008 of soliciting an underage prostitute in a controversial deal in Florida, also lorded his deep pockets over scientists he liked.

“You don’t have to think about money for the next five years,” he told one, Joscha Bach, as Bach was set to move to MIT’s Media Lab in 2014.

Bach declined repeated requests for comment from Science magazine.

Epstein said he was aware some recipients of his donations might not want to be associated with him — so he liked to make his gifts privately.

“I let them decide,” he explained. “If you want to tell people you got it from me, fine. If you prefer not to, for your own personal reasons, that’s OK, too.”