It's conceivable, but it's not going to be easy or simple. Think of how many billions of humans existed simultaneously with John von Neumann without being anywhere near his level. If we figure that Neumann was mostly due to a stellar combination of alleles, then that implies he got lucky on a very large number of alleles (imagine a bunch of alleles which can be on or off, and Neumann got all of them 'on'; then because he was 1 out of 5 billion or whatever, he got log_2 5,000,000,000 = 32. This is not 1 variation, which is easy to select on, or 2, but 32. The current state of the art, using n=100,000 is around 3 SNPs. (I apologize in advance to the geneticists for my reasoning here.))
And I would note that Neumann, despite being happily married, a gifted negotiator, lady's man, and party-goer, never had children.
So Neumann might violate either the simple or reproductive fitness requirements: to the extent we can hope to manufacture Neumanns through genetic engineering, it's not going to be easy; and to the extent we can judge from n=1, the reproductive fitness penalties may be large.
Ah. My bad. I guess I was thinking of his second marriage and didn't remember he had a daughter. But I see she only has 2 kids, so maybe it will still be true soon that von Neumann was without any surviving descendants...
And I would note that Neumann, despite being happily married, a gifted negotiator, lady's man, and party-goer, never had children.
So Neumann might violate either the simple or reproductive fitness requirements: to the extent we can hope to manufacture Neumanns through genetic engineering, it's not going to be easy; and to the extent we can judge from n=1, the reproductive fitness penalties may be large.