Sperm bank of Nobel Prize Winners fails to produce hundreds of child prodigies

Among 200 children that were born from the sperm of the Nobel Prize winners, only one, Doron Blake, came out to be incredibly talented. He scored a 180 on an IQ test, knew how to use a computer at two, began reading "Hamlet” at five. But all this didn’t help him in his life.

David Plotz, an American journalist wrote a book about the history of the long-term experiment.

Robert Klark Graham was an optometrist. He received 100 million dollars for his invention – unbreakable plastic lens. For some time he was even thinking of buying an island and establishing his own state. Graham, who was a racist, always thought that humans retrograded. He thought that the only thing that could change this was the sperm bank of Nobel Prize Winners. The man sincerely thought that such a sperm bank could produce more geniuses to save mankind from inevitable degradation.

Graham decided to bring his plan to life in his own mansion in Escondido, California. He established his own project in 1980in which all Nobel Prize Winners were becoming sperm donors to enrich the human genetic potential.

It seemed as if a new era had come. But this project was only for real geniuses. The absolute anonymity and the use of pseudonyms doesn’t let us speak with confidence about those who took part in the project. John Forbes Nash, a crazy mathematician, wanted to become a donor. It’ s completely certain that Jonas Salk, one of the inventors of the polio vaccine, became one.

According to David Plotz, only three Nobel laureates took part in the project. William Shockley is the only name that is known for certain. He received a Nobel Prize in physics in 1956 for inventing a transistor. He can be called "the father of the electronic era”. This genius spent the last 25 years of his life trying to stop the poor and the blacks from having children. The scientist was sure that they had a low level of genetic development. In the end Shockley was made a laughing-stock of the media and an idol of the Ku Klux Klan.

The Sperm Bank existed for a long time but never became popular as its founder hoped. Times have changed as well: women prefer to have beautiful and healthy children rather than  child prodigies.

After Shockley’s death Robert Graham hoped to continue his project but it began to lose its positions. In 1999, two years after the death of its founder, the bank finally closed down. Doron Blake, it’s only "nursling”, also didn’t justify the hopes of Robert Graham.

In 2001 Plotz found him in the Reed College . According to the journalist, “he looked like a hippy with a pretty laid-back appearance". He had given up his studies and had got engaged in spiritualism. “I think it was a bad idea to make geniuses. People thought I was going to achieve great success. But it didn't turn out to be like that. I haven't done anything great in my life" Doron Blake told reporters.