Review of Ascension

I forget the title of the book, but it was possibly by Frederick Pohl, was written in the 60's or 50's. The meta plot was exactly the same. A giant multi-generational ship is launched, but its really just an experiment, and the crew has no idea that they are actually still on earth. I remember in the book the point of it was to make geniuses breed with each other, and give them no entertainment except for scientific problems and see what these bottled-up geniuses end up sending "back" to earth. In the book they solved numerous mathematical problems that had befuddled people for centuries, as well as numerous other scientific things. This is touched on in at least once scene in the series. About halfway through the book the funding for the project was reduced and the spinning motion of the ring (which is not on the show) was stopped, which was immediately noticible to the crew. Only one super genius kid was able to figure out that there was no way that the amount of gravity they were feeling was from the thrust of the engines of the designs that they had and that they must be sitting on a planet. Again, as with the mini series, there was an inside man who was fully aware of the outside world, but he had an actual way to get into and out of the ship. I wish I could remember the title and author but I immediately recognized it when I watched the show so maybe some other old school scifi fans out there can find out who wrote the original book some 50 years ago?