Gregor Johann Mendel

Gregor Mendel was born in Heinzendorff in 1822 and died in 1884.

Ever since Mendel was a boy he was very interested in science.

Whenever his friends would come back from school they would tell Mendel what they studied and he would be so excited. Mendel was so interested about what his friends told him that he begged his father to let him study. This meant a great sacrifice to his father he because owned a small farm.

Needless to say, he sent his young son Gregor, who was only eleven to school. At school Mendel showed great intelligence so much that his parents decided to deny themselves the pleasures of life to keep their son in school. When Mendel was a young man, he became a science teacher, and a monk. He had a pea garden, there he conducted his experiments that are renowned by science teachers today.

People told Mendel that he looked like his father. He would think to himself, why do some people resemble their father and some people their mother? Many men before Mendel thought that very same question, yet with all their efforts to figure out this mystery only made things more complex. How does heredity work? Mendel chose to answer this question with peas. Because peas are easily bred, and grow quickly made them a perfect candidate for hereditary experiments.

Mendel tried experiments with crossing tall pea plants with short pea plants, the results were tall ones. Mendel thought that this tallness trait must have been the dominant trait. Of course he did not let this matter rest here, He left the tall children alone until they formed ripe seeds. Then he took the seeds and planted them. Then the

"grandchildren" plants grew. What happened surprised Mendel not all of the plants were tall, 1 out of every four plants grown were short.

Mendel thought that shortness must be a recessive trait.

Mendel tilled and grew more pea plants in groups of four. Yet something even more surprising came to be - the short plant of the four offspring had nothing but short offspring, and one tall plant had nothing but tall offspring, but the other two plants gave a mixture, one short offspring for every three tall ones.

Mendel thought to himself how about the shape of the seeds? because some peas were rounded and some were wrinkled. He wondered if these followed the same pattern as did the height.

It was an amazing discovery, and people began by shrugging and saying "so what, what does it amount to," "Does it concern raising peas, or even all plants.