Father of Genetics - Gregor Johann Mendel

Gregor Johann Mendel (1822-1884) was born in Heinzendorf, Silesia (present-day Hyncice) and, after studying botany, physics and mathematics at the University of Vienna, entered the monastery of St. Thomas at Brunn in Austria, where he pursued his lifelong interest in plant hybridisation. Between 1856 and 1863 he carried out a meticulous, multi-year series of crossing experiments in the monastery garden, working with garden pea (Pisum sativum) and eventually crossing and cataloguing 24,034 plants across many generations. His results were presented and published in 1866 as 'Experiments on Plant Hybrids' in the Proceedings of the Brunn Society of Natural History, making him the first truly systematic researcher in genetics, decades before the word 'genetics' itself existed. Mendel's success is usually credited to five things working together: he applied mathematics, statistics and probability theory to a biological problem for the first time; he kept accurate, detailed quantitative records of every cross; his experiments were carefully planned and used large sample sizes; the seven characters he chose were each controlled by a single gene located on a separate chromosome; and he confirmed the purity of his parental lines by repeated self-crossing before startin …