The Genius Factory The Curious History of the Nobel Prize Sperm Bank

About this book

It was the most radical human-breeding experiment in American history and no one knew how it turned out. The Repository for Germinal Choicenicknamed the Nobel Prize sperm bankopened to notorious fanfare in 1980 and for two decades women flocked to it from all over the country to choose a sperm donor from its roster of Nobel-laureate scientists mathematical prodigies successful businessmen and star athletes. But the bank quietly closed its doors in 1999its founder dead its confidential records sealed and the fate of its children and donors unknown. In early 2001 award-winning columnist David Plotz set out to solve the mystery of the Nobel Prize sperm bank. Plotz wrote an article for Slate inviting readers to contact himconfidentiallyif they knew anything about the bank. The next morning he received an email response then another and anothereach person desperate to talk about something they had kept hidden for years. Now in The Genius Factory Plotz unfolds the full and astonishing story of the Nobel Prize sperm bank and its founders radical scheme to change our world. Believing America was facing genetic catastrophe Robert Graham an eccentric millionaire decided he could reverse the decline by artificially inseminating women with the sperm of geniuses. In February 1980 Graham opened the Repository for Germinal Choice and stocked it with the seed of gifted scientists inventors and thinkers. Over the next nineteen years Grahams genius factory produced more than two hundred children. What happened to them? Were they the brilliant offspring that Graham expected? Did any of the superman fathers care about the unknown sons and daughters who bore their genes? What were the mothers like?