Gregor Mendal

                             GREGOR MENDEL 

Gregor Mendel (born July 20, 1822, Heinzendorf, Silesia, Austrian Empire [now Hynčice, Czech Republic]—died January 6, 1884, Brünn, Austria-Hungary [now Brno, Czech Republic]) was a botanist, teacher, and Augustinian prelate, the first person to lay the mathematical foundation of the science of genetics, in what came to be called Mendelism.

Education and early career 

Born to a family with limited means in German-speaking Silesia, Mendel was raised in a rural setting. His academic abilities were recognized by the local priest, who persuaded his parents to send him away to school at the age of 11. His Gymnasium (grammar school) studies completed in 1840, Mendel entered a two-year program in philosophy at the Philosophical Institute of the University of Olmütz (Olomouc, Czech Republic), where he excelled in physics and mathematics, completing his studies in 1843. His initial years away from home were hard, because his family could not sufficiently support him. He tutored other students to make ends meet, and twice he suffered serious depression and had to return home to recover. As his father’s only son, Mendel was expected to take over the small family farm, but he preferred a different solution to his predicament, choosing to enter the Alternate monastery as a novitiate of the Augustinian order, where he was given the name Gregor.

The move to the monastery took him to Brünn, the capital of Moravia, where for the first time he was freed from the harsh struggle of former years. He was also introduced to a diverse and intellectual community. As a priest, Mendel found his parish duty to visit the sick and dying so distressing that he again became ill. Abbot Cyril Napp found him a substitute-teaching position at Znaim (Znojmo, Czech Republic), where he proved very successful. However, in 1850 Mendel failed an exam—introduced through new legislation for teacher certification—and was sent to the University of Vienna for two years to benefit from a new program of scientific instruction. As at Olmütz, Mendel devoted his time at Vienna to physics and mathematics, working under Austrian physicist Christian Doppler and mathematical physicist Andreas von Ettinghausen. He also studied the anatomy and physiology of plants and the use of the microscope under botanist Franz Unger, an enthusiast for the cell theory and a supporter of the developmentalist (pre-Darwinian) view of the evolution of life. Unger’s writings on the latter made him a target for attack by the Roman Catholic press of Vienna shortly before and during Mendel’s time there. 

Mendel went on to relate his results to the cell theory of fertilization, according to which a new organism is generated from the fusion of two cells. In order for pure breeding forms of both the dominant and the recessive type to be brought into the hybrid, there had to be some temporary accommodation of the two differing characters in the hybrid as well as a separation process in the formation of the pollen cells and the egg cells. In other words, the hybrid must form germ cells bearing the potential to yield either the one characteristic or the other. This has since been described as the law of segregation, or the doctrine of the purity of the germ cells. Since one pollen cell fuses with one egg cell, all possible combinations of the differing pollen and egg cells would yield just the results suggested by Mendel’s combinatorial theory.

Mendel first presented his results in two separate lectures in 1865 to the Natural Science Society in Brünn. His paper “Experiments on Plant Hybrids” was published in the society’s journal, Verhandlungen des naturforschenden Vereines in Brünn, the following year. It attracted little attention, although many libraries received it and reprints were sent out. The tendency of those who read it was to conclude that Mendel had simply demonstrated more accurately what was already widely assumed—namely, that hybrid progeny revert to their originating forms. They overlooked the potential for variability and the evolutionary implications that his demonstration of the recombination of traits made possible. Most notably, Swiss botanist Karl Wilhelm von Nägeli actually corresponded with Mendel, despite remaining skeptical as to the significance of his results and doubting that the germ cells in hybrids could be pure.