2022 Dysgenics Award Nominations

Nominations are in for the inaugural Dysgenics Award. Now it's over to you, our readers, to decide the winner!

Two weeks ago, we launched the first Dysgenics Awards.

We asked our readers to nominate the best human who died childless in 2022, thus making our species weaker. Here are the entries and our readers’ justifications:

Joseph Aloisius Ratzinger aka Pope Benedict XVI (nominated by Kristo Veeroja):

Evidence of childlessness:

He isn't on the list of sexually active popes and the vow of celibacy is active in the Catholic Church.

Evidence of eminence:

He was the Pope. He was smart based on his writings and speeches. I wish he had sired thousands of children. Also, he died just before the start of 2023, which is unfortunate. I want to die on the first day of the new year.

Saul Kripke (nominated by Olivier Kaan):

Evidence of childlessness:

No mention of children in any of the obituaries. His marriage with a British philosopher ended in divorce. He was notoriously inept in the social department.

Evidence of eminence:

He was considered one of the 20th century's greatest philosophers and was so brilliant that a B.S. in mathematics was his only academic qualification. From the NYT obituary:

Professor Kripke’s classic work, “Naming and Necessity,” first published in 1972 and drawn from three lectures he delivered at Princeton University in 1970 before he was 30, was considered one of the century’s most evocative philosophical books.

Regarding his childhood brilliance:

The rabbi’s precocious son had taught himself ancient Hebrew by the age of 6, had finished reading Shakespeare’s complete works by 9 and published his first completeness theorem in modal logic when he was 18.

Shinzo Abe (nominated by Jon Mayor):

Evidence of childlessness:

His wife, Akie Matsuzaki, had fertility issues and never conceived.

Evidence of eminence:

Improved foreign relations with the Western world and military power. Charismatic and inspiring to the Japanese people — someone they desperately needed.

Terry Teachout (nominated by Georgios Vazouras):

Evidence of childlessness:

Obituaries make no mention of him having any children between his two marriages.

Evidence of eminence:

Terry Teachout, who amongst other endeavors was a regular contributor as a cultural critic to the WSJ and to Commentary magazine, a biographer of figures including Louis Armstrong and H.L Menken, the librettist of Paul Moravec's opera "The Letter", and the playwright of "Satchmo at the Waldorf".

Steven Goldberg (nominated by Gal Ben-Kochav):

Evidence of childlessness:

His obituary makes no mention of having children.

Evidence of eminence:

Chair of Sociology at City College of New York for some twenty years until his retirement in 2008 and author of the most logical and intelligent book I have ever read (which he wrote before he turned thirty-two!), The Inevitability of Patriarchy (and its many sequels plus several other important books).

---

We now ask our readers to choose the winner of the inaugural Dysgenics Award! The poll will run for one week.