Two bikini-clad women snapped posing with Stephen Hawking in a newly uncovered photo from the Jeffrey Epstein files were allegedly his long-term nurses, his family claimed Wednesday.
The late British theoretical physicist was thrown into the spotlight after the eye-catching snap of him sandwiched between the unidentified women quickly started going viral following the Justice Department’s latest Epstein document dump.
The photo, which showed Hawking smiling and posing with a red cocktail while flanked by the two women, is believed to have been taken back in 2006 on the Caribbean island of St. Thomas — near Epstein’s notorious private island.
The women he was posing with as he laid on a sunbed were the regular carers employed to help provide 24-hour care for Hawking amid his battle with earl-onset ALS, according to his family.
“Professor Hawking made some of the greatest contributions to physics in the 20th century while at the same time being the longest-known survivor of motor neurone disease, a debilitating condition which left him reliant on a ventilator, voice synthesizer, wheelchair and round-the-clock medical care,” his family told The Post in a statement.
“Any insinuation of inappropriate conduct on his part is wrong and far-fetched in the extreme.”
Hawking, who died in 2018 at age 76 after battling ALS for 50 years, has long been tied to the late disgraced pedophile.
He was among a group of world-renowned scientists who attended a conference funded and hosted by Epstein in March 2006 — five months before the disgraced financier was charged with soliciting prostitution in Florida.
The photo of him with the bikini-clad women was among a handful of images of the renowned scientist included in the latest batch of Epstein files.
Hawking, who is referenced at least 250 times in the DOJ’s cache of files, was also name-checked after prominent Epstein accuser Virginia Giuffre alleged that the scientist had once participated “in a underage orgy” in the Virgin Islands.
Epstein, for his part, had offered a cash reward to Giuffre’s friends if they could help debunk her claim, according to emails contained in the files.
“You can issue a reward to any of virginias friends acquaionts family [sic] that come forward and help prove her allegations are false,” Epstein wrote in a typo-ridden email to his madam, Ghislaine Maxwell, on Jan. 12, 2015.
“The strongest is the clinton dinner, and the new version in the virgin isalnds that stven hawking partica-ted in an underage orgy.”
Hawking was never formally accused of any wrongdoing amid his ties to Epstein.
He died before Epstein was arrested in 2019 on sex trafficking charges.