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Gregor Johann Mendel - Founder of Genetics

© Jackie DiGiovanni

Johann  Mendel was born July 22, 1822, to Anton and Rosine Mendel who worked a farm and orchard in Heizendorf (now Hyncice), in Silesia (now the Czech Republic).

He spent two years studying at the Philosophical Institute in Olmutz (now Olomouc). In 1843, he became an Augustinian friar at St. Thomas monastery in Brünn (now Brno), and took the name Gregor. The monks at the monastery studied theology, as well as philosophy and the natural sciences. Mendel was a shy man, but well liked by his fellow monks and students. The monastery was a center of learning and research. There was an extensive library, a large collection of mineral samples, a botanical garden, and an herbarium.

In 1847, he became an ordained priest. He did not excel at pastoral duties and in 1949 he began teaching at a secondary school in Znaim.  He attempted the exam for teacher certification and failed. In 1851, Mendel began studies at the University of Vienna, specializing in mathematics and biology. After two years of studying zoology, botany, chemistry, and physics, he was again unable to pass the exam for certification. However, his studies in mathematics would serve him well in his later research.

In 1854, Mendel returned to Brünn and to teaching. The abbot of St. Thomas, Cyrill Franz Napp, encouraged study in the natural sciences and plant cultivation at the monastery.

In 1856, Mendel began the hybridization project that would open the door to understanding genetics. There is a theory that Mendel hoped to refute the ideas of Charles Darwin and prove that characteristics from one generation to the next are predictable and the changes seen are not due to evolution. Over eight years, he manually pollinated common garden peas and kept careful notes of the seven characteristics he wanted to trace in both the parent and child generations. In all, he used approximately 28,000 pea plants, and made 287 crosses between 70 different purebred plants. (A purebred plant when bred with itself will produce plants identical to itself.) Mendel's careful recordkeeping led him to correct conclusions that were later re-proven. Mendel said:

• Inherited characteristics are the result of factors that occur in pairs.
• Some factors are dominant and may mask a recessive factor in the pair.
• An offspring receives one-half of a paired factor from each parent.

Mendel presented his findings to the Natural Science Society in 1865 and received little notice. Possibly, no one understood the concept he presented. He used a mathematical construction for presentation, which was highly unusual for the time. He published his work in a paper titled Experiments in Plant Hybridization in 1866 and sent 133 copies to people who might be interested.

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