Mendel, peas and genetics

Friday 22 July 2011




Gregor Johann Mendel (1822 – 1884) was born in Austria. He was a scientist and Augustinian friar who gained fame only after his death as the founder of the new science of genetics. Mendel demonstrated that the inheritance of certain traits in pea plants follows particular patterns, now referred to as the laws of Mendelian inheritance. Although the significance of Mendel's work was not recognized until the turn of the 20th century, the independent rediscovery of these laws formed the foundation of the modern science of genetics.
Nevertheless, it was William Bateson, born in Robin Woods Bay, in England, who coined the term genetics (1905) to describe the study of heredity and biological inheritance, and he was the main populariser of the ideas of Gregor Mendel.

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