Gregor Mendel
Gregor Mendel was born on 20th July, 1822, and died on 6th January, 1884. He was a biologist and botanist whose scientific research showed that inheritance proceeds according to certain scientific laws.
Mendel was a brilliant student and his family encouraged him to study, but they were very poor so Mendel entered a monastery in 1843. There he taught Mathematics, Physics and Greek to high school students. Eight years later, in 1851, the monastery sent him to the University of Vienna where he was able to continue his education. In 1853, he returned to the monastery and began teaching and researching again.
Mendel's theories of heredity based on his work with pea plants are well known to students of
Biology. But his findings were so different from the accepted views on heredity at the time that his work was ignored until long after his death. His paper, Experiments in Plant Hybridisation, in which he described how traits were inherited, has become one of the most influential publications in the history of science.
Mendel was the first person to trace the characteristics of successive generations of an organism. In Mendel's day, a number of hypotheses had been suggested to explain heredity. The most popular one was the so-called blending theory. According to this theory, inherited traits blended from generation to generation. For instance, a red rose crossed with a white rose would, over time, produce a pink rose. Another theory put forward by Charles Darwin was called pangenesis. This stated that there were hereditary particles in our bodies, and that these particles were affected by our actions. The altered particles could be inherited by the next generation. These theories were disproved by Mendel.
The first thing he noticed when he began his experiments was that traits were inherited in certain numerical ratios. This observation led him to come up with the idea of the dominance of genes and he tested it in peas. For seven years he crossed thousands of plants to prove the Laws of Inheritance. From his experiments, Mendel developed the basic laws of heredity. Those laws are the following: that traits do not combine, but are passed whole from generation to generation (which disproved the blending theory and Darwin's theory); each member of the parental generation passes on only half of its hereditary information to each offspring (with certain traits dominant over others); and different offspring of the same parents receive different sets of hereditary information.
Mendel's research formed the beginnings of the modern science of genetics. Genetic theory has had a huge impact on our lives. Many diseases, for example haemophilia, are known to be inherited, and family histories can be traced to determine the probability of passing on a hereditary disease. Scientists can now design plants that are easier to grow, or which can produce more food. This practical side of the results of Mendel's research is being used to improve the way we live.