An unrecognized genius

One incredible aspect is that Gregor Mendel’s research went unrecognized to begin with: In 1986 he sent his writings to eminent scientists of his day and prestigious research institutes, but his work elicited hardly any response from them. The only one to support him was his friend Carl Nägeli, with whom Gregor Mendel maintained a lively correspondence. When scientists rediscovered his work in 1900, these letters and the writings at research institutes were the only source – all the other documents had been burned in the meantime.

What made his discoveries so exceptional was the fact that Gregor Mendel was the first to explain plant breeding in scientific terms. Crossing had long existed by then; KWS is ten years older than Mendel’s laws, for example. However, application of those laws helped spark a boom in breeding starting in 1900.

After attending a village school and high school in what is now the Czech Republic, Gregor Mendel went on to study philosophy at the University of Olomouc. A lack of money forced him to abandon his studies, and in 1843 he entered an Augustinian monastery, began to study theology, and was ordained as a priest in 1847. Lectures on breeding fruit trees and viniculture he attended during his studies stimulated his inquiring mind.

The years 1851 to 1853 marked a further milestone on the road to the theory of heredity: Gregor Mendel studied physics, chemistry, math and biology in Vienna, where he learned how to conduct qualitative analyses of data from experiments, an approach he would later use in his crossing work. His “laboratory” was a monastery garden where descendants of the plants he bred are still growing to this day. |