28 Facts About Gregor Mendel

Gregor Mendel worked with seven characteristics of pea plants: plant height, pod shape and color, seed shape and color, and flower position and color.

The profound significance of Gregor Mendel's work was not recognized until the turn of the 20th century with the rediscovery of his laws.

Gregor Mendel was born into a German-speaking family in Heinzendorf bei Odrau, in Silesia, Austrian Empire.

Gregor Mendel was the son of Anton and Rosine Mendel and had one older sister, Veronika, and one younger, Theresia.

Gregor Mendel struggled financially to pay for his studies, and Theresia gave him her dowry.

Gregor Mendel became a monk partly because it enabled him to obtain an education without paying for it himself.

When Gregor Mendel entered the Faculty of Philosophy, the Department of Natural History and Agriculture was headed by Johann Karl Nestler, who conducted extensive research on hereditary traits of plants and animals, especially sheep.

Gregor Mendel returned to his abbey in 1853 as a teacher, principally of physics.

Gregor Mendel died on 6 January 1884, at the age of 61, in Brno, from chronic nephritis.

Gregor Mendel's genome was analysed, revealing that Mendel was predisposed to heart problems.

Gregor Mendel, known as the "father of modern genetics," chose to study variation in plants in his monastery's 2 hectares experimental garden.

Gregor Mendel was assisted in his experimental design by Aleksander Zawadzki while his superior abbot Napp wrote to discourage him, saying that the Bishop giggled when informed of the detailed genealogies of peas.

Gregor Mendel first focused on seed shape, which was either angular or round.

Between 1856 and 1863 Gregor Mendel cultivated and tested some 28,000 plants, the majority of which were pea plants.

Gregor Mendel's experiments led him to make two generalizations, the Law of Segregation and the Law of Independent Assortment, which later came to be known as Mendel's Laws of Inheritance.

When Gregor Mendel's paper was published in 1866 in, it was seen as essentially about hybridization rather than inheritance, had little impact, and was cited only about three times over the next thirty-five years.

Gregor Mendel's paper was criticized then but is considered a seminal work.

About forty scientists listened to Gregor Mendel's two groundbreaking lectures, but it would appear that they failed to understand the implications of his work.

At times, Gregor Mendel must have entertained doubts about his work, but not always: "My time will come," he reportedly told a friend, Gustav von Niessl.

Gregor Mendel's results were quickly replicated, and genetic linkage quickly worked out.

Gregor Mendel published a report on his work with hawkweed, a group of plants of great interest to scientists at the time because of their diversity.

Gregor Mendel appears to have kept animals at the monastery, breeding bees in custom-designed bee hives.

Gregor Mendel studied astronomy and meteorology, founding the 'Austrian Meteorological Society' in 1865.

Gregor Mendel described novel plant species, and these are denoted with the botanical author abbreviation "Mendel".

Three other lines of evidence likewise lend support to the assertion that Gregor Mendel's results are indeed too good to be true.

An explanation for Gregor Mendel's results based on tetrad pollen has been proposed, but reproduction of the experiments showed no evidence that the tetrad-pollen model explains any of the bias.

In 2008 Hartl and Fairbanks wrote a comprehensive book in which they concluded that there were no reasons to assert Gregor Mendel fabricated his results, nor that Fisher deliberately tried to diminish Gregor Mendel's legacy.

In celebration of his 200th birthday, Gregor Mendel's body was exhumed and his DNA sequenced.