Repository for Germinal Choice

The Repository for Germinal Choice (originally known as the Hermann J. Muller 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. The first baby conceived from the project was a girl born on April 19, 1982. 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.

Robert Graham managed the bank until his death in February 1997 and the responsibilities were passed to Floyd Kimble, a businessman from Ohio who had shown interest in the bank. At the time of Graham's death, the bank claimed to have produced 229 children, none of them from sperm donated from Graham's initial focus, Nobel Prize winners. When Kimble died in 1998 the combined relatives of both men decided to close down the bank. All sperm samples were destroyed; it remains unclear what happened to the Repository's records.

Although most news articles of the time made much of the Repository's "Nobel sperm" standards, in fact the Repository is only known to have stocked the sperm of one Nobelist, William Shockley. 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. Smith later estimated his "hit rate" of donors signed up compared to men he invited to be "six or eight, maybe ten" out of one hundred. The search was expanded to country-wide, and eventually more donors were recruited, although none of them were – then or currently – Nobel laureates. At the time of his death, Graham had expanded his requirements to allow athletes, artists, and businessmen as donors.

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