Gregor Mendel: Planting the Seeds of Genetics

Gregor Mendel’s Life

In an abbey garden, Mendel planted the seeds for the science of heredity.

Born to poor tenant farmers in the Austro-Hungarian Empire, Gregor Mendel joined the Abbey of St. Thomas in 1843, at age 21. The Abbey was a dream come true for a budding scientist. A vibrant center of research, its friars were active in the sciences, linguistics, literature and philosophy. The Abbey made it possible for Mendel to attend the University of Vienna and to read widely in a library that contained 30,000 books.

Mendel had diverse interests—astronomy, meteorology, physics, botany, and mathematics. He was one of the first scientists to use rigorous experiments and mathematical analysis as a means to study biology.

In 1856, Mendel launched an ambitious series of experiments with Pisum sativum—the garden pea. Eight years and approximately 28,000 pea plants later, Mendel published the results of his grand experiment. His methods were so advanced and his results so groundbreaking that no one realized how his discovery would eventually revolutionize science.

After being elected Abbot in 1868, Mendel had little time for science. He may have been disheartened by the lack of reaction to his pea paper, but he knew that his discovery was important. Not long before his death in 1884 he told a scientific colleague, “My time will come.”

Mendel was right. In 1900 three European botanists rediscovered his work and set off a scientific explosion. The field of genetics was born and Mendel is considered its founding father.

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