Question
Write in brief the life of Gregor Johan Mendel.
Answer
Gregor Johann Mendel (1822-1884) was an Austrian monk and scientist known for his pioneering work in the field of genetics. He was born in a peasant family in a small village in the Austrian Empire (now the Czech Republic). In 1843, he entered the St. Thomas Monastery in Brno, where he spent most of his life.
Mendel was a self-taught scientist who conducted experiments on the inheritance of traits in pea plants from 1856 to 1863. He discovered the principles of heredity by studying the patterns of inheritance of traits such as seed colour, flower colour, and plant height. He proposed the concepts of dominant and recessive traits, and the laws of segregation and independent assortment, which form the basis of modern genetics.
Mendel’s work went largely unnoticed during his lifetime, but his experiments were rediscovered in the early 20th century and became the foundation of modern genetics. Mendel died in 1884, at the age of 61, due to kidney disease. He is widely regarded as the father of genetics and his work remains influential in the field of biology.
