Gregor Mendel Gregor Mendel Gregor Johann Mendel (; 20 July 1822 – 6 January 1884) () was a scientist, Augustinian friar and abbot of St. Thomas' Abbey in Brno, Margraviate of Moravia. Mendel was born in a German-speaking family in the Silesian part of the Austrian Empire (today's Czech Republic) and gained posthumous recognition as the founder of the modern science of genetics. Though farmers had known for millennia that crossbreeding of animals and plants could favor certain desirable traits, Mendel's pea plant experiments conducted between 1856 and 1863 established many of the rules of heredity, now referred to as the laws
Plant genetics an English translation. Mendel died in 1884. The significance of Mendel's work was not recognized until the turn of the 20th century. Its rediscovery prompted the foundation of modern genetics. His discoveries, deduction of segregation ratios, and subsequent laws have not only been used in research to gain a better understanding of plant genetics, but also play a large role in plant breeding. Mendel's works along with the works of Charles Darwin and Alfred Wallace on selection provided the basis for much of genetics as a discipline. In the early 1900s, botanists and statisticians began to examine the segregation ratios