Gregor Johann Mendel (/ ˈmɛndəl /; German: [ˈmɛndl̩]; Czech: Řehoř Jan Mendel; [3] 20 July 1822 [4] – 6 January 1884) was an Austrian [5][6] biologist, meteorologist, [7] mathematician, Augustinian friar and abbot of St. Thomas' Abbey in Brno (Brünn), Margraviate of Moravia.
Through his careful breeding of garden peas, Gregor Mendel discovered the basic principles of heredity and laid the mathematical foundation of the science of genetics.
Mendel’s work went virtually unnoticed by the scientific community, which incorrectly believed that the process of inheritance involved a blending of parental traits that produced an intermediate physical appearance in offspring.
Mendel’s work remains fundamental to the modern-day field of genetics and understanding how traits pass from generation to generation for many species, including humans.
In his monastery garden, Mendel performed thousands of crosses with pea plants, discovering how characteristics are passed down from one generation to the next — namely, dominant and recessive traits. Mendel’s early experiments provided the basis of modern genetics. Johann Gregor Mendel.
This year we celebrate the 200th anniversary of the birth of Gregor Johann Mendel, who discovered the missing component of Darwin’s evolutionary theory, the genetic mechanism of trait inheritance.
Gregor Mendel discovered the laws of heredity in 1866, but science ignored him for 35 years. Discover the story of his belated rediscovery in 1900.
As the father of modern genetics, Gregor Mendel is considered one of these giants owing to his discovery of the basic principles of inheritance. Retrospectively, it can be argued that the greatest century of discovery in biology was a period from the 1850s/1860s to the 1950s/1960s.