JOHANN GREGOR MENDEL (1822-1884)

The Man, the Monk

Johann Gregor Mendel was born in the Silesian village of Heinzendorf, now Hyncice in the Czech Republic. His parents were peasant farmers and very early on recognized their son's intellect. Mendel was able to stay in school and pursue an academic life. His sister, Theresia, actually sacrificed part of her dowry so that Mendel could get an education.

In 1843, Mendel entered the Augustinian Monastery in Brno (in what is now the Czech Republic) as a novice. In his autobiography, Mendel said that unlike other clerics, he didn't feel called to the Church: "my circumstances decided my vocational choice." Mendel did have a good life at the monastery; he was part of the cultural and scientific circles of the area. Also, the monastery sent him to school to continue his education.

Mendel had many interests, and while at the University of Vienna (1851-1853) he studied physics under Christian Doppler, and took courses in chemistry and zoology. As part of his monasterial duties, Mendel taught high school science at the local schools, and was remembered as a kind and good teacher.

The genetic experiments Mendel did with pea plants took him eight years (1856-1863). He published his results in 1865, and his laws of genetic inheritance earned him his place in history as the Father of Genetics.

Throughout the years, Mendel served the monastery loyally, and in 1868, Mendel became the Abbot, prelate of the Brno monastery. His responsibilities as prelate meant that Mendel had less time to spend on his scientific investigations. Mendel took his prelateship seriously; he was aware of the debt he owed to the monastery for supporting his scholarly interests. In the last decade of his life, Mendel became embroiled in a civic dispute about the taxes being levied on the monastery. The dispute caused ill-feeling between the monastery and the civic authorities and was not settled during Mendel's life.

There now exists in Brno a Mendel museum where his life is remembered.

Links

Mendel Web

This is a site where you can get a lot of information about Gregor Mendel, his life and scientific achievements. Read Mendel's descriptions of the pea traits he used in his experiments. You can also read an essay by Dr. Robert Olby, Mendel biographer, on how Mendel's work has been regarded since its rediscovery in 1900.

Electronic Scholarly Publishing

This site has the entire text for many classic genetics papers which can be downloaded and printed out in PDF format. Mendel's paper (1865) is one of the papers. To view and print these documents, you will need a copy of Adobe Acrobat Reader software, available without charge from Adobe Systems Incorporated.

The Mendel Museum

Check out this online exhibit for more on Gregor Mendel, based on a physical exhibit in Brno in the Czech Republic. Mendel spent most of his adult life in Brno at the Abbey of St. Thomas where he eventually became the Abbot.

• Bowler, Peter J., 1989, The Mendelian Revolution, The Athlone Press, London.

• Dunn, L. C., 1965, A Short History of Genetics, McGraw-Hill, Inc., New York.

• Iltis, Hugo, 1932, Life of Mendel, W. W. Norton & Company, Inc., London.

• Moore, John, A., 1985, Science as a Way of Knowing, American Society of Zoologists, Thousand Oaks.

• Olby, Robert C., 1966, Origins of Mendelism, Constable and Company Ltd., London.

• Orel, Vitezslav, 1996, Gregor Mendel, the First Geneticist, Oxford University Press, Oxford.

• Portugal, Franklin H., and Cohen, Jack S., 1977, A Century of DNA: A History of the Structure and Function of the Genetic Substance, The Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, Massachusetts.

• Stern, Curt, and Sherwood, Eva, R., ed., 1966, The Origin of Genetics: A Mendel Source Book, W. H. Freeman and Company, San Francisco.

• Stubbe, Hans, 1972 (English Translation), History of Genetics, The Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, Massachusetts.

• Sturtevant, A. H., 1965, A History of Genetics, Harper & Row, Publishers, New York.