# Did The Nobel prizewinner's sperm bank Succeed? **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [June 13, 2008, 4:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-the-nobel-prizewinners-sperm-bank-succeed/452822 "2008-06-13T16:27:43Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 7\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![ralph124c](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/8797f3/32.png) [@ralph124c](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ralph124c)\ **Post date:** [June 13, 2008, 4:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-the-nobel-prizewinners-sperm-bank-succeed/452822/1 "2008-06-13T16:27:43Z")
I recall reading an interview with the late dr. Robert Shockley (Nobelist in physics), wherein he proposed a pserm bank, which would only accept the donations from genius-level men. My question: did this thing ever get set up? Were any genius babies born as a result of it? Could such an arrangement serve to raise the avaerage IQ of the citizenry? ---
**Author:** ![friedo](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/8edcca/32.png) [@friedo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/friedo)\ **Post date:** [June 13, 2008, 4:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-the-nobel-prizewinners-sperm-bank-succeed/452822/2 "2008-06-13T16:39:26Z")
It was actually [William Shockley](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Shockley), and the Nobel Laureate sperm bank itself was not founded by him, but by [Robert Graham](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Klark_Graham). Shockley is the only person who publicly admitted to donating, and the place closed in 1999. ---
**Author:** ![Icerigger](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/icerigger/32/432_2.png) [@Icerigger](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Icerigger)\ **Post date:** [June 13, 2008, 4:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-the-nobel-prizewinners-sperm-bank-succeed/452822/3 "2008-06-13T16:49:42Z")
Shockley was a racist, and thought black people should be paid not to repoduce. A real class act. ---
**Author:** ![bonzer](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/45deac/32.png) [@bonzer](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/bonzer)\ **Post date:** [June 16, 2008, 8:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-the-nobel-prizewinners-sperm-bank-succeed/452822/4 "2008-06-16T20:45:31Z")
Anyone interested in the fate of Graham’s Repository for Germinal Choice and the children born from it should read David Plotz’s writings on the subject. A [collection of his original _Slate_ articles](http://www.slate.com//id/100331/) on it is linked to from the Wikipedia page on Graham that **friedo** included, but he also subsequently published an entire book, _The Genius Factory_, in 2005. Plotz’s initial interest in the subject led him to make an online appeal for former staff, doners and mothers to contact him. This quickly led him, by his own account, into a quagmire of journalistic dilemmas, since he wound up being able to figure out in some cases who the likely anonomous doners were to particular grown children. Teenagers who were now wondering who their genetic father was and had they any siblings. Plotz did introduce some. The overwhelming tone of the result is disappointment - the fathers rarely matched the imagined fantasy of a “Nobel Prizewinner” dad. For one of Graham’s biggest problems had been finding what he saw as suitable potential fathers. In some cases he seems to have enrolled men who he basically just _liked_ as blokes to donate. The kids? As far as can be judged from Plotz’s book, an unremarkable mixed bunch of teenagers, all things considered. ---
**Author:** ![si\_blakely](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/d9b06d/32.png) [@si\_blakely](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/si_blakely)\ **Post date:** [June 17, 2008, 6:49am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-the-nobel-prizewinners-sperm-bank-succeed/452822/5 "2008-06-17T06:49:57Z")
[QUOTE=bonzer] …The overwhelming tone of the result is disappointment - the fathers rarely matched the imagined fantasy of a “Nobel Prizewinner” dad …The kids? As far as can be judged from Plotz’s book, an unremarkable mixed bunch of teenagers, all things considered. [/QUOTE] So - rather than succeed, the seed sucked 😉 Si ---
**Author:** ![KGS](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/90ced4/32.png) [@KGS](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/KGS)\ **Post date:** [June 17, 2008, 5:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-the-nobel-prizewinners-sperm-bank-succeed/452822/6 "2008-06-17T17:11:56Z")
[QUOTE=bonzer] The kids? As far as can be judged from Plotz’s book, an unremarkable mixed bunch of teenagers, all things considered. [/QUOTE] Guess that puts an end to the whole “Nature vs. Nurture” debate, eh? 🆒 ---
**Author:** ![brazil84](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/8491ac/32.png) [@brazil84](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/brazil84)\ **Post date:** [June 17, 2008, 6:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-the-nobel-prizewinners-sperm-bank-succeed/452822/7 "2008-06-17T18:06:47Z")
[QUOTE=Icerigger] Shockley was a racist, and thought black people should be paid not to repoduce. A real class act. [/QUOTE] Here is what Wikipedia says: > [@](#): > > Although Shockley was concerned about both black and white dysgenic effects, he found the situation among blacks more disastrous. While unskilled whites had 3.7 children on average versus an average of 2.3 children for skilled whites, Shockley found from the 1970 Census Bureau reports that unskilled blacks had 5.4 children versus 1.9 for the skilled blacks.[15] Shockley reasoned that because intelligence (like most traits) is inherited, the black population would, over time, become much less intelligent countering all the gains that had been made by the Civil Rights movement. Shockley’s published writings and lectures to scientific organizations on this topic, such as the National Academy of Sciences, were partly based on the research of Berkeley psychologist Arthur Jensen, Cyril Burt and H. J. Eysenck. Shockley also proposed that individuals with IQs below 100 be paid to undergo voluntary sterilization. > **[William Shockley](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Shockley)** > > William Bradford Shockley (February 13, 1910 – August 12, 1989) was an American physicist. He was the manager of a research group at Bell Labs that included John Bardeen and Walter Brattain. The three scientists were jointly awarded the 1956 Nobel Prize in Physics "for their researches on semiconductors and their discovery of the transistor effect." > Partly as a result of Shockley's attempts to commercialize a new transistor design in the 1950s and 1960s, California's Silicon Valley became a ho...