Gregor Mendel
Gregor Mendel was born on the 20th of July, 1822 and he was the
son of a farmer. He became a monk to escape poverty and get an
education, he went to the University of Vienna to train to
become a teacher but he was sent home in disgrace. His
supervisor said he "lacks insight and the requisite clarity of
knowledge"
After failing his diploma, he returned to the monastery and devoted his time to
solving the puzzle of inheritance with his pea plant experiments. He noticed
that when he crossed a pea plant with a particular distinct characteristic – such
as a long stem – with another pea plant with the opposite characteristic – a
short stem – the result wasn't something in between, but plants that were all
tall.
His stroke of genius was to attribute this 3:1 ratio to "dominant" and
"recessive" particles in the plants, which we now recognise as dominant and
recessive genes. He then worked out the pattern of inheritance of various
traits and produced two generalisations that became known as the laws of
heredity.
In 1866 Mendel published his work on heredity in the Journal of the Brno
Natural History Society. It had absolutely no impact.
For much of the remainder of his life, Mendel devoted himself to the duties of
the monastery. Mendel did continue with some experiments and successfully
produced a hybrid strain of bees which produced excellent honey, however,
they were so vicious they stung everybody around for miles and had to be
destroyed.
If he'd taken his experiments one step further – and not been distracted by his
new duties as abbot of his monastery – he
might have figured out that in peas the
"particles of inheritance" are strung out on
seven pairs of chromosomes – like peas in pods.
When Mendel died in 1884 at the age of 62, the
new abbot burned all his papers.
In the 1860's the hot topic was Charles Darwin's theory of evolution. The
controversy generated over that theory made it easy to overlook a pea plant
study.
In 1900 Mendel's work was at last recognised by three independent
investigators. Ironically, it was the examination of how variations are inherited
during the course of evolution that led to the rediscovery of Mendel's laws in
1900.