The Repository for Germinal Choice was a sperm bank that existed in Escondido, California from 1980 to 1999. The repository is commonly believed to have accepted only donations from Nobel Prize laureates, although in fact it accepted donations from non-Nobelists, also. Founded by Robert Klark Graham, the repository was dubbed the ‘Nobel prize sperm bank’ by media reports at the time.
The only contributor who became known publicly was William Shockley, Nobel laureate in physics. Other donors were recruited from among the ranks of scientists and academics Graham and his assistant, Paul Smith, considered to be ‘the future Nobel laureates.’
Graham’s initial attempts to recruit Nobel laureates who lived near the Repository yielded only three volunteers, Shockley among them; however, when the news media began reporting on the existence and intentions of the Repository, two of the laureates broke off their ties to Graham and did not donate. Only Shockley remained, and even he donated only once. Paul Smith was charged with recruiting new donors, and he traveled throughout California, focusing mainly on college campuses, in search of volunteers. At the time of his death, Graham had expanded his requirements to allow athletes, artists, and businessmen as donors.
Graham’s original intention was to monitor the outcomes of children produced through the bank’s sperm, and he asked families using the bank’s sperm to agree to periodic surveys; however, most recipients showed no interest in sharing information on their children once the procedure was over, and when he sent out a survey to recipient families in the early 1990s, few families responded.
Two women who claimed to have been the recipients of Repository sperm and to have raised children born of that sperm responded anonymously to a series of articles in Slate in 2001. Both stated that their children were extremely intelligent and healthy. A later segment of the same Slate article reported on the highlights of the lives of fifteen of the resultant children. Of the fifteen, six reportedly had 4.0 GPAs and two were reported to be ‘artistically precocious.’ Still others were reported to be ‘geniuses’ and ‘whizzes’ at various disciplines. All the children contacted by Slate were in good health, except one, who had what his mother described as a ‘developmental disability.’
The Daily Omnivore 
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