Father of Genetics
Austrian biologist, meteorologist, mathematician, Augustinian friar, and abbot of St. Thomas’ Abbey in Brno (Brünn), Margraviate of Moravia, Gregor Mendel OSA was born on July 20, 1822, and died on January 6, 1884. Mendel, who became famous after his death as the father of modern genetics, was born into a German-speaking family in the Silesian region of the Austrian Empire (now the Czech Republic). Many of the laws of heredity, today known as the laws of Mendelian inheritance, were established by Mendel’s pea plant studies between 1856 and 1863, even though farmers had long understood that crossbreeding animals and plants might favor some desirable qualities.
Gregor Mendel focused on seven traits of pea plants: bloom position and color, pod form and color, seed shape and color, and plant height. Mendel demonstrated, using seed color as an illustration, that a cross between a true-breeding yellow pea and a true-breeding green pea will always result in yellow seeds. The green peas did, however, emerge in the following generation at a ratio of one green to three yellow. Mendel created the labels “dominant” and “recessive” to describe specific features in order to understand this phenomena. In the example above, the yellow trait is dominant and the green trait, which appears to have disappeared in the first filial generation, is recessive.
His discovery, which was published in 1866, showed how invisible “factors”—now known as genes—act to predictably determine an organism’s characteristics. Only after a protracted process that culminated in the identification of the final three of the seven Mendel genes in the pea genome in 2025 were the real genes found.
The rediscovery of Mendel’s rules at the turn of the 20th century—more than thirty years later—recognized the work’s fundamental relevance. The modern era of genetics began in 1900 when Erich von Tschermak, Hugo de Vries, and Carl Correns independently confirmed a number of Mendel’s experimental results.
Early Life
In Heinzendorf bei Odrau, in Silesia, Austrian Empire (now Hynčice in the Czech Republic), Mendel was born into a German-speaking family. He had a younger sister named Theresia and an older sister named Veronika. He was the son of Rosine (Schwirtlich) and Anton Mendel. On a farm that had belonged to the Mendel family for at least 130 years, they lived and worked (the home where Mendel was born is now a museum dedicated to Mendel). Mendel studied beekeeping and worked as a gardener as a child. He went to the Troppau (Czech: Opava) gymnasium as a young guy. He had to miss four months of his gymnasium studies due to illness.
Theresia gave him her dowry because he was having financial difficulties paying for his education. He later provided financial assistance for her three kids, two of whom went on to become doctors.
In part, it allowed him to receive an education without having to pay for it himself, which is why he became a monk. He claimed that because he was the son of a poor farmer, the monastic life protected him from the “perpetual anxiety about a means of livelihood.” He was born Johann Mendel, but upon entering the Order of Saint Augustine, he was given the name “Gregor” (Řehoř in Czech).
Gregor Mendel Career
Johann Karl Nestler, who led the Department of Natural History and Agriculture at the Faculty of Philosophy when Mendel joined, carried out a great deal of research on the genetic characteristics of plants and animals, particularly sheep. Mendel enrolled in the Augustinian St. Thomas’s Abbey in Brno and started his training as a Catholic priest on the advice of Friedrich Franz, his physics teacher. Mendel was a high school substitute teacher. He failed the final of three oral exams required to earn his high school teaching certification in 1850. Under the support of Abbot Cyril František Napp, he was transferred to the University of Vienna in 1851 to receive a more formal education.
Christian Doppler was his physics professor at Vienna. In 1853, Gregor Mendel returned to his abbey to teach physics mostly. Aleksander Zawadzki, whom he met in 1854, supported his studies in Brno. He took the test to earn his teaching certification in 1856, but he failed the oral portion once more. He went on a planned group journey to Paris and London in the summer of 1862, when he saw important scientific locations and the International Exhibition. This trip might have had an impact on the latter phase of his hybridization study. He succeeded Napp as the monastery’s abbot in 1867.
Mendel’s scientific career came to a close after he was promoted to abbot in 1868 because he was swamped with administrative duties, including a conflict with the civil government over its attempt to impose special taxes on religious organizations. Mendel passed away from chronic nephritis in Brno on January 6, 1884, at the age of 61. At his burial, Leoš Janáček, a Czech composer, played the organ. To put a stop to the tax problems, the subsequent abbot destroyed all of Mendel’s papers after his death. Mendel’s body height (168 cm (66 in)) and other physiognomic information were revealed during the 2021 exhumation of his cadaver. Mendel was predisposed to cardiac issues, according to an analysis of his genes.
How did Mendel’s faith influence his work?
Known as the “father of modern genetics,” Mendel decided to use the 2 hectare (4.9 acre) experimental garden at his monastery to investigate plant variety. Aleksander Zawadzki helped Mendel with his experimental design, but his superior abbot Napp wrote to dissuade him, claiming that the Bishop laughed when he learned of the peas’ intricate lineages.
Following his early pea plant tests, Mendel decided to focus on seven characteristics that appeared to be inherited separately from one another: plant height, flower location, pod shape, unripe pod color, seed shape, blossom color, seed coat tint, and flower placement. He started by concentrating on the shape of the seeds, which were either spherical or angular. Mendel grew and tested over 28,000 plants between 1856 and 1863, most of which were pea plants (Pisum sativum). This study shown that in the second generation, one in four pea plants were purebred recessive traits, two out of four were hybrids, and one out of four were purebred dominant traits when true-breeding distinct types were crossed to each other (for example, tall plants fertilized by short plants).
As a result of his investigations, he developed two generalizations that became known as Mendel’s Laws of Inheritance: the Law of Independent Assortment and the Law of Segregation.
Inheritance and genetics books
On February 8 and March 8, 1865, Mendel gave presentations at two sessions of the Natural History Society of Brno in Moravia on his article Versuche über Pflanzenhybriden (“Experiments on Plant Hybridization”). Although it led to a few positive articles in regional media, the scientific community chose to ignore it. Mendel’s study, which was published in 1866 in the Verhandlungen des naturforschenden Vereines in Brünn, was mentioned only roughly three times over the following thirty-five years, had little impact, and was viewed as mostly about hybridization rather than inheritance. Despite criticism at the time, his paper is now regarded as a foundational piece of work.
Mendel’s laws and Religion
Gregor Mendel gave two ground-breaking talks to about forty scientists, but it seems that they were unable to comprehend the significance of his research. He later continued to contact with Carl Nägeli, one of the most prominent biologists of the day, but Nägeli was likewise unimpressed with Mendel’s findings. Mendel reportedly told a friend, Gustav von Niessl, “My time will come,” indicating that he occasionally, but not always, expressed concerns about his work.
The majority of biologists at the time of Mendel believed that all traits were handed down to the following generation by blending inheritance, which averages the traits from each parent. In fact, many effectively do. The operation of several genes with quantitative effects now explains instances of this occurrence.
Charles Darwin made an unsuccessful attempt to use the theory of pangenesis to explain heredity. The significance of Mendel’s theories was not recognized until the early 20th century.
By 1900, Mendel’s works and laws had been rediscoveried, and Hugo de Vries and Carl Correns had independently duplicated his work in an effort to create an effective explanation of discontinuous inheritance rather than combining inheritance. Both recognized Mendel’s importance, and it is believed likely that de Vries did not comprehend the findings until he had read Mendel. Rediscovery was formerly attributed to Erich von Tschermak as well, but this is no longer recognized as he was ignorant of Mendel’s rules.
Gregor Mendel and the Catholic Church
His religious membership served as a catalyst for his scientific endeavors rather than a source of contention because it gave him the chance and setting to carry out his ground-breaking studies as a monk in the Catholic Church.
Mendel as a Friar
Between 1856 and 1863, Gregor Mendel, a Catholic priest and Augustinian friar, conducted ground-breaking studies on pea plants in the grounds of his monastery, so establishing the field of genetics. He taught physics and natural history at a nearby school in Brno, which is now in the Czech Republic, and was a highly educated member of his order. Mendel developed his renowned “laws of inheritance” as a result of his research on the inheritance of physical characteristics.
