Born: 22-Jul-1822
Birthplace: Hynice, Czechia
Died: 6-Jan-1884
Location of death: Brno, Czechia
Cause of death: unspecified
Remains: Buried, Central Cemetery, Brno, Czechia
Gender: Male
Religion: Roman Catholic
Race or Ethnicity: White
Occupation: Scientist, Botanist, Religion
Nationality: Czechia
Executive summary: Discovered the laws of inheritance
MENDEL, Gregor (1822-84). The laws of heredity on which the modern science of genetics is based were discovered by an obscure Austrian monk named Gregor Mendel. Yet Mendel's discoveries remained virtually unknown for more than 30 years after he completed his experiments--in spite of the fact that his papers reached the largest libraries of Europe and the United States. (See also Genetics; Heredity.)
Johann Mendel was born on July 22, 1822, in Heinzendorf, Austria. He took the name Gregor when he entered the monastery in Brunn, Moravia (now Brno, Czech Republic) in 1843. He studied for two years at the Philosophical Institute in Olmutz (now Olomouc, Czech Republic), before going to Brunn. He became a priest in 1847. For most of the next 20 years he taught at a nearby high school, except for two years of study at the University of Vienna (1851-53). In 1868 Mendel was elected abbot of the monastery.
Mendel's famous garden-pea experiments began in 1856 in the monastery garden. He proposed that the existence of characteristics such as blossom color is due to the occurrence of paired elementary units of heredity, now known as genes. Mendel presented his work to the local Natural Science Society in 1865 in a paper entitled "Experiments with Plant Hybrids." Administrative duties after 1868 kept him too busy for further research. He lived out his life in relative obscurity, dying on Jan. 6, 1884. In 1900, independent research by other scientists confirmed Mendel's results.
(born July 22, 1822, Heinzendorf, Austria—died Jan. 6, 1884, Brünn, Austria-Hungary) Austrian botanist and plant experimenter who laid the mathematical foundation of the science of genetics. He became an Augustinian monk in 1843 and later studied at the University of Vienna. In 1854, working in his monastery's garden, he began planning the experiments that led to his formulation of the basic principle of heredity. He used the edible pea for his studies, crossing varieties that had maintained constant differences in distinct traits such as height (tall or short) and seed colour (green or yellow). He theorized that the occurrence of the visible alternative traits, in the constant hybrids and in their progeny, was due to the occurrence of paired elementary units of heredity, now known as genes. What was new in Mendel's interpretation of his data was his recognition that genes obey simple statistical laws. His system proved to be of general application and is one of the basic principles of biology. His work was rediscovered in 1900 by three botanists, Carl Erich Correns, Erich Tschermak von Seysenegg, and Hugo de Vries, who independently obtained similar results and found that both the experimental data and the general theory had been published 34 years previously.
Teacher, priest, and scientist Johann Mendel was born in 1822 in what was then Austria (now Czechia). His parents were farmers, and as a boy working on the farm he became fascinated with fruit trees and gardening. He was a brilliant student in grade school, and his family struggled to pay his tuition to high school and, later, the Olmutz Philosophical Institute. When he could not afford to attend university, he instead joined the Augustinian monastery, becoming a priest and adopting the new Christian name Gregor. He twice failed the exams required to become a high school science teacher, but still taught on a part-time basis. He was also assigned work as a hospital chaplain, but found it frustrating and difficult, and soon returned to the monastery.
At the monastery Mendel tended the garden, and beginning in 1856 he conducted extensive experiments with pea pod plants, tracking some 28,000 individual plants over several years and focusing his attention on seven basic characteristics of the plants. In his experiments, Mendel crossed peas of different varieties — tall, short, various seed shapes and colors, etc. — and kept detailed records of how these characteristics were seen or vanished in subsequent generations. He conducted similar experiments on other plants and on mice, and having been educated in mathematics, Mendel noticed recurring ratios in his analysis of how traits were inherited, ratios which could only be explained through dominance and segregation of genes.
In one experiment, for example, Mendel crossed a plant that produces a round seed with a plant which produces a curving, Y-shaped seed, and in each and every one of the resulting plants the seeds were round. In the next generation, however, in which only these round hybrid seeds were planted, 5,474 plants matured bearing round seeds, while 1,850 matured bearing curved seeds — a ratio of almost exactly 3:1. From this Mendel concluded that the round seed is a dominant trait, inherited from either parent, while the curved seed is a recessive trait, seen only when the dominant trait is absent in both parents.
Mendel's mathematics revealed the basic laws of heredity — that many maternal and paternal traits do not "merge" in the offspring, but are instead passed intact; that some of these characteristics are dominant while other characteristics are recessive; and that the inheritance of such traits obeys simple statistical laws. His short monograph Versuche über Pflanzen-Hybride (Treatises on Plant Hybrids) was published in 1865, and is now recognized as among the most important scientific papers ever written.
At the time, however, it was not widely read and its implications were understood only by Mendel. Before his death in 1884 he wrote, "I am convinced that it will not be long before the whole world acknowledges the results of my work," and indeed, in the early 1900s three European botanists, working independently, rediscovered what Mendel had explained some 35 years earlier. His research has come to be seen as the first rigorous, scientific explanation of heredity, and the foundation for modern genetics.
Father: Anton (farmer)
Mother: Rosine
Sister: Veronica
Sister: Theresia
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