Interesting facts from the life of Mendel. Gregor Mendel (Gregor Mendel) brief biography of the scientist

At the beginning of the 19th century, in 1822, in Austrian Moravia, in the village of Hanzendorf, a boy was born into a peasant family. He was the second child in the family. At birth he was named Johann, the surname of his father was Mendel.

Life was not easy, the child was not spoiled. Since childhood, Johann got used to peasant work and fell in love with it, especially gardening and beekeeping. How useful were the skills he acquired in childhood?

The boy showed outstanding abilities early. Mendel was 11 years old when he was transferred from a village school to a four-year school in a nearby town. He immediately proved himself there and a year later he ended up in a gymnasium in the city of Opava.

It was difficult for parents to pay for school and support their son. And then misfortune befell the family: the father was seriously injured - a log fell on his chest. In 1840, Johann graduated from high school and, at the same time, from the teacher candidate school. In 1840, Mendel graduated from six classes of the gymnasium in Troppau (now Opava) and the following year entered philosophy classes at the university in Olmutz (now Olomouc). However, the family's financial situation worsened during these years, and from the age of 16 Mendel himself had to take care of his own food. Unable to constantly endure such stress, Mendel, after graduating from philosophical classes, in October 1843, entered the Brunn Monastery as a novice (where he received the new name Gregor). There he found patronage and financial support for further studies. In 1847 Mendel was ordained a priest. At the same time, from 1845, he studied for 4 years at the Brunn Theological School. Augustinian monastery of St. Thomas was the center of scientific and cultural life in Moravia. In addition to a rich library, he had a collection of minerals, an experimental garden and a herbarium. The monastery patronized school education in the region.

Despite the difficulties, Mendel continues his studies. Now in philosophy classes in the city of Olomeuc. Here they teach not only philosophy, but also mathematics and physics - subjects without which Mendel, a biologist at heart, could not imagine his future life. Biology and mathematics! Nowadays this combination is inextricable, but in the 19th century it seemed absurd. It was Mendel who was the first to continue the broad track of mathematical methods in biology.

He continues to study, but life is hard, and then the days come when, by Mendel’s own admission, “I can’t bear such stress any longer.” And then a turning point comes in his life: Mendel becomes a monk. He does not at all hide the reasons that pushed him to take this step. In his autobiography he writes: “I found myself forced to take a position that freed me from worries about food.” Frankly, isn't it? And not a word about religion or God. An irresistible craving for science, a desire for knowledge, and not at all a commitment to religious doctrine led Mendel to the monastery. He turned 21 years old. Those who became monks took a new name as a sign of renunciation from the world. Johann became Gregor.

There was a period when he was made a priest. A very short period. Comfort the suffering, equip the dying for their final journey. Mendel didn't really like it. And he does everything to free himself from unpleasant responsibilities.

Teaching is a different matter. As a monk, Mendel enjoyed teaching physics and mathematics classes at a school in the nearby town of Znaim, but failed the state teacher certification exam. Seeing his passion for knowledge and high intellectual abilities, the abbot of the monastery sent him to continue his studies at the University of Vienna, where Mendel studied as an undergraduate for four semesters in the period 1851-53, attending seminars and courses in mathematics and natural sciences, in particular, the course of the famous physics K. Doppler. Good physical and mathematical training later helped Mendel in formulating the laws of inheritance. Returning to Brunn, Mendel continued teaching (he taught physics and natural history at a real school), but his second attempt to pass teacher certification was again unsuccessful.

Interestingly, Mendel took the exam to become a teacher twice and... failed twice! But he was a very educated man. There is nothing to say about biology, of which Mendel soon became a classic; he was a highly gifted mathematician, loved physics very much and knew it very well.

Failures in exams did not interfere with his teaching activities. At the Brno City School, Mendel the teacher was highly valued. And he taught without a diploma.

There were years in Mendel's life when he became a recluse. But he did not bow his knees before the icons, but... before the beds of peas. Since 1856, Mendel began to conduct well-thought-out extensive experiments in the monastery garden (7 meters wide and 35 meters long) on crossing plants (primarily among carefully selected pea varieties) and elucidating the patterns of inheritance of traits in the offspring of hybrids. In 1863 he completed the experiments and in 1865, at two meetings of the Brunn Society of Natural Scientists, he reported the results of his work. From morning until evening he worked in the small monastery garden. Here, from 1854 to 1863, Mendel conducted his classical experiments, the results of which are not outdated to this day. G. Mendel also owes his scientific successes to his unusually successful choice of research object. In total, he examined 20 thousand descendants in four generations of peas.

Experiments on crossing peas have been going on for about 10 years. Every spring, Mendel planted plants on his plot. The report “Experiments on plant hybrids,” which was read to Brune naturalists in 1865, came as a surprise even to friends.

Peas were convenient for various reasons. The offspring of this plant has a number of clearly distinguishable characteristics - green or yellow color of cotyledons, smooth or, on the contrary, wrinkled seeds, swollen or constricted beans, long or short stem axis of the inflorescence, and so on. There were no transitional, half-hearted “blurred” signs. Each time one could confidently say “yes” or “no”, “either-or”, and deal with the alternative. And therefore there was no need to challenge Mendel’s conclusions, to doubt them. And all the provisions of Mendel’s theory were no longer refuted by anyone and deservedly became part of the golden fund of science.

In 1866, his article “Experiments on plant hybrids” was published in the proceedings of the society, which laid the foundations of genetics as an independent science. This is a rare case in the history of knowledge when one article marks the birth of a new scientific discipline. Why is it considered this way?

Work on plant hybridization and the study of the inheritance of traits in the offspring of hybrids was carried out decades before Mendel in different countries by both breeders and botanists. Facts of dominance, splitting and combination of characters were noticed and described, especially in the experiments of the French botanist C. Nodin. Even Darwin, crossing varieties of snapdragons different in flower structure, obtained in the second generation a ratio of forms close to the well-known Mendelian split of 3:1, but saw in this only “the capricious play of the forces of heredity.” The diversity of plant species and forms taken into experiments increased the number of statements, but decreased their validity. The meaning or “soul of facts” (Henri Poincaré’s expression) remained vague until Mendel.

Completely different consequences followed from Mendel’s seven-year work, which rightfully constitutes the foundation of genetics. Firstly, he created scientific principles for the description and study of hybrids and their offspring (which forms to cross, how to conduct analysis in the first and second generations). Mendel developed and applied an algebraic system of symbols and character notations, which represented an important conceptual innovation. Secondly, Mendel formulated two basic principles, or laws of inheritance of traits over generations, that allow predictions to be made. Finally, Mendel implicitly expressed the idea of discreteness and binarity of hereditary inclinations: each trait is controlled by a maternal and paternal pair of inclinations (or genes, as they later came to be called), which are transmitted to hybrids through parental reproductive cells and do not disappear anywhere. The makings of characters do not influence each other, but diverge during the formation of germ cells and are then freely combined in descendants (laws of splitting and combining characters). The pairing of inclinations, the pairing of chromosomes, the double helix of DNA - this is the logical consequence and the main path of development of genetics of the 20th century based on the ideas of Mendel.

The fate of Mendel's discovery - a delay of 35 years between the very fact of the discovery and its recognition in the community - is not a paradox, but rather a norm in science. Thus, 100 years after Mendel, already in the heyday of genetics, a similar fate of non-recognition for 25 years befell the discovery of mobile genetic elements by B. McClintock. And this despite the fact that, unlike Mendel, at the time of her discovery she was a highly respected scientist and a member of the US National Academy of Sciences.

In 1868, Mendel was elected abbot of the monastery and practically retired from scientific pursuits. His archive contains notes on meteorology, beekeeping, and linguistics. On the site of the monastery in Brno, the Mendel Museum has now been created; A special magazine "Folia Mendeliana" is published.

Biography of Gregor Mendel

Gregor Mendel short biography

Gregor Johann Mendel is an outstanding Austrian botanist who discovered the doctrine of heredity, later called “Mendelism” in honor of the scientist. He is also considered the founder of modern genetics, since the patterns of hereditary factors he identified became the foundation for the emergence of this science.

He showed interest in nature at an early age, when he worked as a gardener. The name Gregor did not appear by chance. In 1843, the scientist became a monk at the Augustinian Monastery of St. Thomas in the Czech Republic. There he was given the name Gregor. The following year he entered the Brunn Theological Institute, after which he became a priest.

He was given many sciences. For example, he could easily replace absent teachers in mathematics or Greek. However, he was most interested in biology and geology. On the advice of the rector of the gymnasium where he taught, in 1851 Mendel entered the Faculty of Natural History at the University of Vienna. Here he studied under the guidance of one of the first cytologists in the world, Unger.

During his stay in Vienna, he became keenly interested in the problem of plant hybridization.

In the 1850s, he conducted many experiments on plants, including peas in the monastery garden. It was thanks to these experiments that he was able to explain the laws of the mechanism of inheritance, which were later renamed “Mendel’s Laws.” Soon his works were published under the title “Experiments on Plant Hybrids.” The scientist himself was sure that he had made the greatest discovery. However, when his discovery did not work in experiments with some animals, he became disillusioned with science and stopped doing biological research.

The significance of his experiments became known at the beginning of the 20th century, when the doctrine of genes began to develop.

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Report: Gregor Mendel

MENDEL, Gregor Johann (Mendel, Gregor Johann) (1822–1884), founder of the doctrine of heredity. Born July 22, 1822 in Heinzendof (Austria-Hungary, now Gincice, Czech Republic).

He studied at the schools of Heinzendorf and Lipnik, then at the district gymnasium in Troppau. In 1843 he graduated from philosophical classes at the university in Olmutz and became a monk at the Augustinian Monastery of St. Thomas in Brunn (Austria, now Brno, Czech Republic). He served as an assistant pastor and taught natural history and physics at school. In 1851–1853 he was a volunteer student at the University of Vienna, where he studied physics, chemistry, mathematics, zoology, botany and paleontology. Upon returning to Brunn he worked as an assistant teacher in a secondary school until 1868, when he became abbot of the monastery.

In 1856, Mendel began his experiments on crossing different varieties of peas that differed in single, strictly defined characteristics (for example, the shape and color of seeds). Accurate quantitative accounting of all types of hybrids and statistical processing of the results of experiments conducted by him for almost 10 years allowed him to formulate the basic laws of heredity - the splitting and combination of hereditary “factors”.

Mendel showed that these factors are separate and do not merge or disappear when crossed. Although when crossing two organisms with contrasting traits (for example, yellow or green seeds), only one of them appears in the next generation of hybrids (Mendel called it “dominant”), the “disappeared” (“recessive”) trait reappears in subsequent generations.

Mendel's hereditary "factors" are now called genes.

Mendel sent a copy of the article to K. Nägeli, a famous botanist and authoritative expert on problems of heredity, but Nägeli also failed to appreciate its significance.

Brief biography of Gregor Mendel

And only in 1900, Mendel’s misunderstood and forgotten work attracted everyone’s attention: three scientists at once, H. de Vries (Holland), K. Correns (Germany) and E. Cermak (Austria), having carried out their own experiments almost simultaneously, became convinced of the validity Mendel's conclusions. The law of independent segregation of characters, now known as Mendel's law, laid the foundation for a new direction in biology - Mendelism, which became the foundation of genetics.

Mendel himself, after unsuccessful attempts to obtain similar results by crossing other plants, stopped his experiments. Until the end of his life, he was engaged in beekeeping, gardening, and conducted meteorological observations. Mendel died on January 6, 1884.

Among the scientist’s works is an Autobiography (Gregorii Mendel autobiographia iuvenilis, 1850) and a number of articles, including Experiments on plant hybridization (Versuche ber Pflanzenhybriden, in the “Proceedings of the Brunn Society of Naturalists,” vol. 4, 1866).

Bibliography

Mendel G. Experiments on plant hybrids. M., 1965

Timofeev-Resovsky N.V. About Mendel. – Bulletin of the Moscow Society of Natural Scientists, 1965, No. 4

Mendel G., Noden S., Sajre O.

Selected works. M., 1968

Mendel Gregor Johann (1822-1884), Austrian biologist, founder of the doctrine of heredity.

Graduated in 1843

A short biography of Gregor Mendel for schoolchildren in grades 1-11. Briefly and only the most important

University in Olmutz, Mendel went to the Augustinian monastery of St. Thomas in Brunn (now Brno, Czech Republic) and there took the name Gregor, and a year later became a priest.

In 1851-1853

On February 8 and March 8, 1865, the scientist spoke at meetings of the Natural History Society in Brünn with a story about the patterns that he discovered (later this field of knowledge would be called genetics).

Mendel chose peas as the material for his experiments. By combining parent plants with different characteristics, the biologist established that heredity obeys certain rules and can be expressed mathematically.

A specific gene is responsible for each trait; Mendel called it the indivisible carrier of heredity. He was able to show that characteristic characteristics are transmitted independently during crossing and do not merge or disappear. The scientist introduced the concept of dominant traits that appear in the next generation of hybrids, and recessive traits that appear after one or several generations.

Mendel Gregor Johann (1822-1884), Austrian biologist, founder of the doctrine of heredity.

After graduating from the university in Olmutz in 1843, Mendel went to the Augustinian monastery of St. Thomas in Brunn (now Brno, Czech Republic) and there he took the name Gregor, and a year later he became a priest.

In 1851-1853

Mendel, Gregor Johann

As a student at the University of Vienna, he studied physics, chemistry, zoology, botany and mathematics. In a small parish garden, starting in 1856, Mendel conducted experiments that ultimately led to the sensational discovery of the laws of inheritance of traits. On February 8 and March 8, 1865, the scientist spoke at meetings of the Natural History Society in Brünn with a story about the patterns that he discovered (later this field of knowledge would be called genetics).

Mendel chose peas as the material for his experiments.

By combining parent plants with different characteristics, the biologist established that heredity obeys certain rules and can be expressed mathematically. A specific gene is responsible for each trait; Mendel called it the indivisible carrier of heredity. He was able to show that characteristic characteristics are transmitted independently during crossing and do not merge or disappear.

The scientist introduced the concept of dominant traits that appear in the next generation of hybrids, and recessive traits that appear after one or several generations.

The natural scientists who were the first to hear Mendel’s reports did not ask the scientist a single question.

His work “Experiments with Plant Hybrids,” published in 1866, did not evoke any response. Only in 1900, three biologists at once, H. de Vries (Netherlands), K. Correns (Germany) and E. Cermak (Austria), having independently conducted their own experiments, were convinced of the validity of the conclusions of the Abbot of Brunn.

Fame came to Mendel after his death (he died on January 6, 1884), and the doctrine of heredity was deservedly called Mendelism.

Similar materials.

Johann was born the second child into a peasant family of mixed German-Slavic origin and middle income, to Anton and Rosina Mendel. In 1840, Mendel graduated from six classes of the gymnasium in Troppau (now Opava) and the following year entered philosophy classes at the university in Olmutz (now Olomouc). However, the family's financial situation worsened during these years, and from the age of 16 Mendel himself had to take care of his own food. Unable to constantly endure such stress, Mendel, after graduating from philosophical classes, in October 1843, entered the Brunn Monastery as a novice (where he received the new name Gregor). There he found patronage and financial support for further studies. In 1847 Mendel was ordained a priest. At the same time, from 1845, he studied for 4 years at the Brunn Theological School. Augustinian monastery of St. Thomas was the center of scientific and cultural life in Moravia. In addition to a rich library, he had a collection of minerals, an experimental garden and a herbarium. The monastery patronized school education in the region.

Monk teacher

As a monk, Mendel enjoyed teaching physics and mathematics classes at a school in the nearby town of Znaim, but failed the state teacher certification exam. Seeing his passion for knowledge and high intellectual abilities, the abbot of the monastery sent him to continue his studies at the University of Vienna, where Mendel studied as an undergraduate for four semesters in the period 1851-53, attending seminars and courses in mathematics and natural sciences, in particular, the course of the famous physics K. Doppler. Good physical and mathematical training later helped Mendel in formulating the laws of inheritance. Returning to Brunn, Mendel continued teaching (he taught physics and natural history at a real school), but his second attempt to pass teacher certification was again unsuccessful.

Experiments on pea hybrids

Since 1856, Mendel began to conduct well-thought-out extensive experiments in the monastery garden (7 meters wide and 35 meters long) on crossing plants (primarily among carefully selected pea varieties) and elucidating the patterns of inheritance of traits in the offspring of hybrids. In 1863 he completed the experiments and in 1865, at two meetings of the Brunn Society of Natural Scientists, he reported the results of his work. In 1866, his article “Experiments on plant hybrids” was published in the proceedings of the society, which laid the foundations of genetics as an independent science. This is a rare case in the history of knowledge when one article marks the birth of a new scientific discipline. Why is it considered this way?

Great discoveries are often not immediately recognized

Although the proceedings of the Society, where Mendel's article was published, were received in 120 scientific libraries, and Mendel sent out an additional 40 reprints, his work had only one favorable response - from K. Nägeli, a professor of botany from Munich. Nägeli himself worked on hybridization, introduced the term “modification” and put forward a speculative theory of heredity. However, he doubted that the laws identified on peas were universal and advised repeating the experiments on other species. Mendel respectfully agreed to this. But his attempt to repeat the results obtained on peas on the hawkweed, with which Nägeli worked, was unsuccessful. Only decades later it became clear why. Seeds in hawkweed are formed parthenogenetically, without the participation of sexual reproduction. There were other exceptions to Mendel's principles that were interpreted much later. This is partly the reason for the cold reception of his work. Beginning in 1900, after the almost simultaneous publication of articles by three botanists - H. De Vries, K. Correns and E. Cermak-Zesenegg, who independently confirmed Mendel's data with their own experiments, there was an instant explosion of recognition of his work. 1900 is considered the year of birth of genetics.

A beautiful myth has been created around the paradoxical fate of the discovery and rediscovery of Mendel’s laws that his work remained completely unknown and was only discovered by chance and independently, 35 years later, by three rediscoverers. In fact, Mendel's work was cited about 15 times in an 1881 summary of plant hybrids, and botanists knew about it. Moreover, as it turned out recently when analyzing the workbooks of K. Correns, back in 1896 he read Mendel’s article and even wrote an abstract of it, but did not understand its deep meaning at that time and forgot.

The style of conducting experiments and presenting the results in Mendel’s classic article makes it very likely the assumption that the English mathematical statistician and geneticist R. E. Fisher came to in 1936: Mendel first intuitively penetrated into the “soul of facts” and then planned a series of many years of experiments so that the illuminated his idea came to light in the best possible way. The beauty and rigor of the numerical ratios of forms during splitting (3: 1 or 9: 3: 3: 1), the harmony into which it was possible to fit the chaos of facts in the field of hereditary variability, the ability to make predictions - all this internally convinced Mendel of the universal nature of what he found on pea laws. All that remained was to convince the scientific community. But this task is as difficult as the discovery itself. After all, knowing the facts does not mean understanding them. A major discovery is always associated with personal knowledge, feelings of beauty and wholeness based on intuitive and emotional components. It is difficult to convey this non-rational type of knowledge to other people, because it requires effort and the same intuition on their part.

MENDEL, GREGOR JOHANN(Mendel, Gregor Johann) (1822–1884), Austrian biologist, founder of genetics.

Born July 22, 1822 in Heinzendorf (Austria-Hungary, now Gincice, Czech Republic). He studied at the schools of Heinzendorf and Lipnik, then at the district gymnasium in Troppau. In 1843 he graduated from philosophical classes at the university in Olmutz and became a monk at the Augustinian Monastery of St. Thomas in Brunn (Austria, now Brno, Czech Republic). He served as an assistant pastor and taught natural history and physics at school. In 1851–1853 he was a volunteer student at the University of Vienna, where he studied physics, chemistry, mathematics, zoology, botany and paleontology. Upon returning to Brunn he worked as an assistant teacher in a secondary school until 1868, when he became abbot of the monastery. In 1856, Mendel began his experiments on crossing different varieties of peas that differed in single, strictly defined characteristics (for example, the shape and color of seeds). Accurate quantitative accounting of all types of hybrids and statistical processing of the results of experiments that he conducted for 10 years allowed him to formulate the basic laws of heredity - the splitting and combination of hereditary “factors”. Mendel showed that these factors are separate and do not merge or disappear when crossed. Although when crossing two organisms with contrasting traits (for example, yellow or green seeds), only one of them appears in the next generation of hybrids (Mendel called it “dominant”), the “disappeared” (“recessive”) trait reappears in subsequent generations. (Today Mendel's hereditary "factors" are called genes.)

Mendel reported the results of his experiments to the Brunn Society of Naturalists in the spring of 1865; a year later his article was published in the proceedings of this society. Not a single question was asked at the meeting, and the article received no responses. Mendel sent a copy of the article to K. Nägeli, a famous botanist and authoritative expert on problems of heredity, but Nägeli also failed to appreciate its significance. And only in 1900, Mendel’s forgotten work attracted everyone’s attention: three scientists at once, H. de Vries (Holland), K. Correns (Germany) and E. Chermak (Austria), having conducted their own experiments almost simultaneously, became convinced of the validity of Mendel’s conclusions . The law of independent segregation of characters, now known as Mendel's law, laid the foundation for a new direction in biology - Mendelism, which became the foundation of genetics.

Mendel himself, after unsuccessful attempts to obtain similar results by crossing other plants, stopped his experiments and until the end of his life was engaged in beekeeping, gardening and meteorological observations.

Among the scientist’s works - Autobiography(Gregorii Mendel autobiographia iuvenilis, 1850) and a number of articles, including Experiments on plant hybridization (Versuche über Pflanzenhybriden, in "Proceedings of the Brunn Society of Natural Scientists", vol. 4, 1866).

Gregor Mendel(Gregor Johann Mendel) (1822-84) - Austrian naturalist, botanist and religious leader, monk, founder of the doctrine of heredity (Mendelism). Applying statistical methods to analyze the results of hybridization of pea varieties (1856-63), he formulated the laws of heredity.

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Gregor Johann Mendel Biology teacher Kuzyaeva A.M. Nizhny Novgorod

Gregor Johann Mendel (July 20, 1822 - January 6, 1884) Austrian naturalist, botanist and religious figure, Augustinian monk, abbot, founder of the doctrine of heredity (Mendelism). Using statistical methods to analyze the results of hybridization of pea varieties, he formulated the laws of heredity - Mendel's laws - which became the basis of modern genetics.

Johann Mendel was born on July 20, 1822, into the peasant family of Anton and Rosina Mendel in the small rural town of Heinzendorf (Austrian Empire, now the village of Hinchitsy, Czech Republic). The date July 22, which is often given in literature as the date of his birth, is in fact the date of his baptism. House of Mendel

He began to show interest in nature early, already working as a gardener as a boy. After graduating from high school, he studied for two years at the philosophical classes of the Olmutz Institute, in 1843 he became a monk at the Augustinian Monastery of St. Thomas in Brunn (now Brno, Czech Republic) and took the name Gregor. From 1844 to 1848 he studied at the Brunn Theological Institute. In 1847 he became a priest. Starobrnensky Monastery

He independently studied many sciences, replaced absent teachers of Greek and mathematics in one of the schools, but did not pass the exam for the title of teacher. In 1849-1851 he taught mathematics, Latin and Greek at the Znojmo Gymnasium. In the period 1851-1853, thanks to the abbot, he studied natural history at the University of Vienna, including under the guidance of Unger, one of the first cytologists in the world. Franz Unger (1800-1870) University of Vienna

Since 1856, Gregor Mendel began to conduct well-thought-out extensive experiments in the monastery garden (7 * 35 meters) on crossing plants (primarily among carefully selected pea varieties) and elucidating the patterns of inheritance of traits in the offspring of hybrids. A separate card was created for each plant (10,000 pcs.).

In 1863 he completed the experiments, and on February 8, 1865, at two meetings of the Brunn Society of Naturalists, he reported the results of his work. In 1866, his article “Experiments on plant hybrids” was published in the proceedings of the society, which laid the foundations of genetics as an independent science.

Mendel ordered 40 separate prints of his work, almost all of which he sent to major botanical researchers, but received only one favorable response - from Karl Nägeli, professor of botany from Munich. He proposed repeating similar experiments on the hawkweed, which he himself was studying at that time. Later they will say that Nägeli’s advice delayed the development of genetics for 4 years... Karl Nägeli (1817-1891)

Kingdom: Plants Division: Angiosperms Class: Dicotyledonous Order: Astroflora Family: Asteraceae Genus: Hawkweed Mendel tried to repeat the experiments on the hawkweed, then bees. In both cases, the results he obtained on peas were not confirmed. The reason was that the mechanisms of fertilization of both hawkweeds and bees had features that were not yet known to science at that time (reproduction using parthenogenesis), and the crossing methods that Mendel used in his experiments did not take these features into account. In the end, the great scientist himself lost faith in his discovery.

In 1868, Mendel was elected abbot of the Starobrno Monastery and was no longer engaged in biological research. Mendel died in 1884. Beginning in 1900, after the almost simultaneous publication of articles by three botanists - H. De Vries, K. Correns and E. Cermak-Zesenegg, who independently confirmed Mendel's data with their own experiments, there was an instant explosion of recognition of his work. 1900 is considered the year of birth of genetics. H. De Vries H. De Vries E. Cermak

The significance of the works of Gregor Mendel Mendel created the scientific principles for the description and study of hybrids and their offspring (which forms to crossbreed, how to conduct analysis in the first and second generations). Developed and applied an algebraic system of symbols and notation of features, which represented an important conceptual innovation. Formulated two basic principles, or laws of inheritance of characteristics over a series of generations, allowing predictions to be made. Mendel implicitly expressed the idea of discreteness and binarity of hereditary inclinations: each trait is controlled by a maternal and paternal pair of inclinations (or genes, as they later came to be called), which are transmitted to hybrids through parental reproductive cells and do not disappear anywhere. The makings of characters do not influence each other, but diverge during the formation of germ cells and are then freely combined in descendants (laws of splitting and combining characters).

Illustration of Mendel's laws

On January 6, 1884, Gregor Johann Mendel died. Shortly before his death, Mendel said: “If I had to go through bitter hours, then I must admit with gratitude that there were many more beautiful, good hours. My scientific works have given me a lot of satisfaction, and I am convinced that it won’t be long before the whole world recognizes the results of these works.” The monument to Mendel in front of the memorial museum in Brno was built in 1910 with funds raised by scientists from all over the world.

MENDEL (Mendel) Gregor Johann (1822-84), Austrian naturalist, monk, founder of the doctrine of heredity (Mendelism). Applying statistical methods to analyze the results of hybridization of pea varieties (1856-63), he formulated the laws of heredity.

MENDEL (Mendel) Gregor Johann (July 22, 1822, Heinzendorf, Austria-Hungary, now Gincice - January 6, 1884, Brunn, now Brno, Czech Republic), botanist and religious leader, founder of the doctrine of heredity.

Difficult years of study

Monk teacher

Experiments on pea hybrids

Great discoveries are often not immediately recognized

The fate of Mendel's discovery - a delay of 35 years between the very fact of the discovery and its recognition in the community - is not a paradox, but rather a norm in science. So, 100 years after Mendel, already in the heyday of genetics, a similar fate of non-recognition for 25 years befell the discovery of B. mobile genetic elements. And this despite the fact that, unlike Mendel, at the time of her discovery she was a highly respected scientist and a member of the US National Academy of Sciences.