Story Behind the Science

Story Behind the Science: Gregor Mendel

                In the summer of 1878, French Seed Company representative C.W. Eichling visited Gregor Mendel at his monastery in the Czech Republic while touring Central Europe. Eichling toured the monastery grounds with Mendel, and observed the monastery’s pea plant beds, which contained over 25 varieties of peas, many of them hybrids. Although Mendel made one of the most important discoveries in Biology, it was not until 20 years later that his discoveries where recognized. He was born as Johann Mendel in 1822 in the now Czech Republic, and lived as a peasant for most of his childhood. He went to boarding school in Opava, and earned top grades. Although he wanted to become a teacher after graduation, he was forced to return to his parent’s farm in Hyncice. He was accepted to the University of Olomouc in 1841. He earned a two-year degree in math, physics, psych, and ethics. In 1843 he was accepted into the Augustinian Monastery in Brno, and was christened “Gregor.” As long as he performed his clerical duties at the monastery, Mendel was allowed to study whatever he wished in the monastery’s vast library, which he did, still hoping to become a teacher.

                Unfortunately, Mendel encountered many difficulties in becoming a teacher. He failed the teaching certification exams four times, and was only able to become a substitute teacher at the monastery. However, when the Brno Technical School teacher got sick, Mendel filled in. The Abbot of the Brno monastery was impressed with Mendel’s teaching, enough so to send him to the University of Vienna to become better educated. Mendel received his degree in 1854, and returned to the monastery to immediately begin his experiments with peas. Although there had been many heredity experiments involving animals prior to Mendel’s work, scientist didn’t often experiment with plants because they had trouble believing that plants could sexually reproduce. A few did, however, and it was these men that inspired Mendel to experiment with a pea plant’s heredity. Scientists like Carl Linnaeus and Joseph Koelreuter both experimented with hybrid crossing, but until Mendel, no one knew how specific characteristics were passed on to the offspring.

                Mendel began his research in the summer of 1856 on the Pisum pea plant genus. Mendel’s experiment was different from the others because he had an idea about “factors.” He believed that it was the factors that controlled the different variations of a trait. After Mendel made sure that his plants were pure-bred, he began to cross them. He showed with the F1 and F2 generations of tall and short pea plants that the tall gene was dominant and the short gene was recessive. An important step in Mendel’s work was that he counted the plants with the particular trait, and came up with a 3:1 ratio for dominant: recessive.

                Even though Mendel’s research was revolutionary to the field of Biology, it wasn’t really recognized by many scientists. Very few took his research took his research seriously. Mendel was appointed the Abbot of the Augustinian Monastery in 1868. When he became the Abbot, his extensive managerial duties kept him from performing his experiments, and he quit the pea plants. Mendel died in 1884. In 1900, some scientist rediscovered Mendel’s work and labeled him as the father of genes.