MEMBERS of Mensa, the society for people with a high IQ, gathered in the North-East last night to hear tributes to one of their pioneers.

Victor Serebriakoff, a businessman who built up Mensa from a handful of friends to an organisation with 100,000 members, died a year ago aged 87.

Yesterday, his former colleague, Dr Jack Cohen, an ex-chairman of Mensa, gave the first memorial lecture at the University of Northumbria, in Newcastle.

Mr Serebriakoff was a controversial figure who thought it would be possible to produce a more intelligent society by selective breeding.

Dr Cohen, a retired reproductive biologist, said he wanted to celebrate a remarkable life.

"His idea about the future of man is that you should get a group of people who are very healthy, get frozen sperm and ovaries from them and make them available for other people to have healthy children," said Dr Cohen.

"But I don't believe people will go for this. I think they want their own children."

Mr Serebriakoff claimed that the most able seemed to be those who had the least children and the most irresponsible seemed to have the most children.