The Genius Factory by David Plotz

“After more discussion of various aspects of the undertaking, Robert Graham said, ‘Let’s put it over.’ To which Hermann Muller responded: ‘Yes.’ Thereupon the two shook hands and the project was launched.”
    The Sheraton pact kicked off a two-year flurry of activity. The idea of a genius sperm bank was slightly outlandish for 1963 America, but not too much so. The United States was enjoying its post
-Sputnik
scientific renaissance, and the egalitarianism of the late 1960s hadn’t yet arrived. To scientists, politicians, and journalists, the genius sperm bank sounded prudent, not preposterous. Graham and Muller were taken
very
seriously. They proposed storing the sperm at Caltech, an idea the school contemplated without ridicule. They gathered a distinguished advisory board that included psychologist Raymond Cattell, ecologist Garrett Hardin (“The Tragedy of the Commons”), and Jerome Sherman, the Arkansas professor who had perfected the process of freezing and thawing sperm in 1953. Graham incorporated a nonprofit holding company for the planned bank, the “Foundation for the Advancement of Man.” Graham and Muller quarreled about what to name the bank, each trying to compliment the other. Muller proposed the “Robert K. Graham Repository for Germinal Choice.” Graham countered with “Hermann J. Muller Repository for Germinal Choice.” Graham, the superior flatterer, won, and named it after Muller.
    Graham, Muller, and their advisers passionately debated which men were sufficiently outstanding to qualify as donors. Only geniuses? Or geniuses with good politics and big hearts? Graham and Muller contemplated elaborate, government-sponsored panels that would evaluate the worthiness of would-be parents and donors. Muller urged a waiting period: sperm could be released only twenty-five years after the donor’s death, so that his accomplishments could be judged worthy by history. The bank was larded with so much bureaucracy and pompous evaluation that it was doomed from the very start.
    It was also doomed because Muller and Graham were terribly mismatched. They were working for exactly opposite ends. Graham was an elitist and political conservative. Muller was an egalitarian and socialist—strange traits in a genius sperm banker. Muller had insisted that donors be both smart and cooperative in order to serve his ambition of building a more egalitarian society. But Graham cared not a jot for Muller’s interest in cooperativeness. He was going into sperm banking to
prevent
the very socialist utopia that Muller dreamed of. Graham just wanted to breed more Edisons, brilliant men to rule over the bovine masses. Inevitably they quarreled. In 1965, Muller asked Graham to suspend the plans for the bank: better to wait and get it right, Muller warned presciently, than start too soon, be accused of a Hitlerian master-race scheme, and poison the whole project. Graham reluctantly agreed to suspend planning. But two years later, Muller died, and Graham was free of his strictures.
    Even so, Graham set aside the genius sperm bank idea for a few more years. In 1971, he officially chartered the Hermann J. Muller Repository for Germinal Choice, but then he did no more. In the early 1970s, Graham handed off day-to-day control of Armorlite to his son Robin. In 1978, he sold the eyeglasses company to 3M for more than $70 million. Graham, who owned or controlled nearly all of it, was rich beyond reason. He took his cash, plowed it into real estate and other investments, and soon found himself with a fortune of $100 million or more.
    In 1976, Graham was ready for genius sperm. He had just moved from Pasadena to the ten-acre estate in Escondido. He had plenty of room for the bank and, now that he wasn’t running Armorlite, plenty of time. It was the perfect moment, and the perfect place, for him to start. It’s no accident that the three most important sperm banks in the world—Graham’s Repository for Germinal Choice, the