Gregor Mendel - Scientist ｜ Mini Bio ｜ BIO)

Monk, teacher and biologist, Gregor Mendel is known today as the father of modern genetics. Gregor Mendel's experiments on pea plants were fundamental in establishing the field of modern genetics. Born Johann Mendel on July 22, 1822 in what was Austria and is now the Czech Republic, Mendel excelled at school and became an Augustinian monk to further his education. He was given the name Gregor when he entered the monastery. The monastery sent him to the university in Vienna and that gave him the education in science, math, chemistry and botany that he then brought back to use in his teaching. Mendel accepted a teaching position at the monastery in Brno after completing his university studies. It was during this period he began his famous pea plant experiments. Before Mendel, people thought you would equally inherit the traits of parent A and parent B in equal proportions. Mendel experimented with pea plants and found that instead there were dominant and recessive traits in all organisms that were passed on statistically based upon the mixing of genes between the two parents. This theory is now known as the law of segregation. Mendel also formulated the law of independent assortment. The law of independent assortment addressed the fact that there are a large number of traits. These traits are passed on randomly and are independent of the other traits and of the traits of the two different parents. The ability to explain hereditary diseases and to engineer plants with desired properties are all consequences of the fundamental theory founded by Mendel. During his life, Gregor Mendel's research was disregarded by almost everyone. It wasn't until the early 1900s after his death that Mendel's work was appreciated and now serves as the basis for genetics and heredity. In his later years, Mendel became the abbot of his monastery and spent less time with his scientific endeavors. Gregor Mendel died in 1884 at the age of 62. Gregor Mendel's work laid the foundation for modern genetics, for modern gene therapy, and is the basis for some of the most exciting discoveries in medicine currently and in the near future.