Gregor Mendel

Gregor Johann Mendel was an Austrian Augustinian friar and scientist, who gained posthumous fame as the fonder of the new science of genetics for his study of the inheritance of certain traits in pea plants.

He was born 20^th of July of 1822 into an ethnic German family in Heizendorf bei Odrao, now Czech Republic. He had two sisters, one older and other younger than him.

During his childhood, Mendel worked as a gardener, studied beekeeping, and as a young man attended Gymnasium in Opava. Later, from 1840 to 1843, he studied philosophy and physics. In 1843 Mendel began his training as a priest and entered the Augustinian Abbey of St. Thomas in Brno.

Gregor Mendel is known as the father of modern genetics. He studied variation in plants and he conducted his study in the monastery's garden. Between 1856 and 1863 Mendel cultivated and tested some 29,000 pea plants. After Mendel completed his work with peas, he turned to experimenting with honeybees, in order to extend his work to animals. He also described novel plant species.

At first Mendel's work was rejected, and it was not widely accepted until he died, in the early twentieth century. In the 1930s and 1940s the modern synthesis combined Mendelian genetics with Darwin's theory of natural selection.

Mendel died on 6^th of January of 1884 from chronic nephritis.

If Mendel were alive, today it would be his 189^th birthday, as you can see on Google.