Gregor Mendel (1822-1884)
Johann Mendel was born
on 20
July 1822 in Heinzendorf, Silesia, at the time a part of
the
Austro-Hungarian Empire.
He entered the Augustinian Abbey of St. Thomas in Brünn (now
Brno
in the Czech Republic) in 1843, where
he took the religious name Gregor,
and
was ordained as a priest in 1847. He
studied science at the University of Vienna, and although he
failed to
pass his final examinations, he nonetheless was allowed to
return to
the abbey,
where he taught high school physics. His students
universally
praised his qualities as a teacher.
Mendel
performed a number of breeding experiments with bees, mice,
and plants.
The results of his research on peas were presented publically
and
published as "Experiments on
Plant
Hybridization",
in 1866 in the Proceedings
of the
Natural History Society of Brno, a
well-known scientific journal. His work made no impact, and
remained
essentially unknown until its
simultaneous rediscovery in 1900 by three independent workers,
one of
whom had
duplicated his experimental results. Mendel is now recognized
as the "Father of Genetics."
Mendel was
elected Abbot in 1868, at which point his experimental work
was sharply
curtailed. He died on 06 January 1884 from a chronic kidney
condition,
exacerbated by the burden
of his administrative duties.