If this were a financial blog you would assume a different Greenspan than Bennett and in fact they may be related, but since Alan won’t do the DNA test, we may never know. Today at the annual IAJGS conference I spent some time chatting with Bennett in the Exhibition Hall. I asked him if they could implement a triangulation feature where when two people match me on a specific segment I can check if they match each other on that spot. He said yes but gave me no time frame …
Bennett Greenspan and Kitty Cooper
Bennett Greenspan is the founder of Family Tree DNA, one of the big three in personal DNA testing. This came about because a newly retired Bennett wanted to prove that the possible Argentinian relatives he had found were related when there was no paper trail showing this. He had read about Dr. Michael Hammer’s work with DNA and the cohanim Y chromosome marker and wondered why that sort of test could not be used for his case. Dr. Hammer laughed at him and said something like “If you knew how many crazy genealogists have been calling me … someone really ought to start a company.” The rest, as we say, is history.
Tomorrow at 1:45 Elise Freeman is going to speak about “Understanding Your DNA Results in the Context of Ashkenazi Ancestry.” I can’t wait to hear her.