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Gregor Mendel

Gregor Johann Mendel was born to a German-speaking family on July 22nd, 1822 in the small agrarian town of Heizendorf, Austria. He was the second child of peasant parents Anton and Rosine Mendel. At a young age, Mendel worked as a gardener where his love for plants and nature began. As a child, Mendel grew up on an orchard and farm which in fact were early influences on his studies. 

Gregor began his formal education at the Philosophical Institute at Olomouc Czechoslovakia. Mendel proceeded to study physics, chemistry, mathematics, zoology and botany at the University of Vienna but did not succeed in completing his studies due to the fact that he became quite ill at this time. Here he developed his skills as a researcher and studied to become a teacher of Mathematics and Biology.

Mendel's parents could not afford to support his pursuit of higher education and therefore he entered an Augustinian monastery where the foundation of his discoveries was formed. He commenced his part-time teaching career at the monastery while he was continuing his research and studies. Mendel followed his childhood dream and taught natural science to high school students. During this time he also joined the St. Thomas Brünn Monastery and was ordained as a community priest.  

Gregor's ideas were published in 1866 but were not fully recognized until the 1900's.  His work was published in Brünn, Austria (now Brno, Czechoslovakia). Mendel made his discovery by using simple pea pod plants. He closely watched and learned the seven basic characteristics of the pea pod plants. Before examining pea pod characteristics he began by breeding mice.Mendel died in Brno, Austria from chronic nephritis on January 6th, 1884 at the age of 61. His discovery was not found notable until sixteen years after. It was so important because he came up with a very simple but ground-breaking finding for all of the results he saw in his brief experiments.  Before his discoveries, heredity remained a huge puzzle and mystery to all scientists. His breakthrough was highly significant because it allowed scientists afterwards to finally understand the mystery to why children ended up looking very similar to their parents but were not exact replicas. Mendel's discovery helped them to understand that heredity is at the heart of development.

Gregor's discovery was the foundation for the complicated science of genetics.  After running many experiments with pea pods and other organisms, Mendel also called the "father of genetics," discovered the answers to heredity. He found that every plant and every organism contains a male and a female reproductive part meaning they can produce again on their own through "self-pollination".  What was found from breeding his pea pod plants and other flowers was that they all ended up producing plants that were completely identical to them. After examining the offspring very carefully and paying close attention to seven different characteristics that showed up in every plant he saw some differences. For example; short plants only produced short plants, and tall plants only produced tall plants.  Mendel wondered what would happen if you cross bred short plants with tall ones. He did and what he found was that when he bred tall plants with short plants all of the offspring were tall. The exact same thing happened with other pairs of traits he studied. When bred, the offspring of the two plants only showed one of the two forms of plants (basically took traits from only one of the plants instead of equal parts from both). Mendel then became the first individual to figure out that the hereditary information for two different forms of traits can only show up in a single individual. His principle provided the basis for the rest of his work.

Since his discovery was only recognized after his death around the 1900's it did nothing for the world at first. No one wanted to believe that he had made such an amazing breakthrough in science so easily. He was just a monk and part of the problem was that botanists at that time were not used to statistics being applied to natural history.  People only acknowledged it when it was rediscovered simultaneously by Hugo de Vries, Carl Correns, and Erik von Tschermak.  After this rediscovery, more and more scientists slowly began to see the importance of Mendel's discovery and continued to experiment and prove more facts. The efforts of all these scientists rediscovering and working with Mendel's first discovery helped to better the science of genetics.

Gregor Mendel's finding was the basis and all beginning of the science of genetics and to this day is an important discovery. If it wasn't for Mendel's discovery of heredity the study of genetics would not be as it is today. Scientists would not have been able to develop the conclusions that they have today as easily as they have. Since it has been a number of years from when Mendel first made his discovery, there have been many noteworthy improvements and further findings on genetics. Scientists have discovered many more significant facts and have made advancements on their theories that have only bettered the science of genetics and Mendel's first theories.

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