Gregor Mendel

Gregor Johann Mendel (July 22, 1822 – January 6, 1884) was an Austrian monk who is often called the "father of genetics" for his study of the inheritance of traits in pea plants.Mendel showed that there was particulate inheritance of traits according to his laws of inheritance. However, nobody (including Mendel) realised the significance of his work and it was largely ignored until the turn of the 20th century. Its rediscovery prompted the foundation of genetics.

Mendel, Darwin and Galton

Mendel lived around the same time as the British naturalist Charles Darwin (1809 — 1882), and many have fantasized about a historical evolutionary synthesis of Darwinian natural selection and Mendelian genetics during their lifetimes. Mendel had read a German translation of Darwin's Origin (as evidenced by underlined passages in the copy in his monastery), after completing his experiments but before publishing his paper. Some passages in Mendel's paper are Darwinian in character, evidence that the Origin of the Species influenced Mendel's writing. Darwin did not have a copy of Mendel's paper, but he did have a book by Focke with references to it. The leading expert in heredity at this time was Darwin's cousin Francis Galton who had mathematical skills that Darwin lacked and may have been able to understand the paper had he seen it. In any event, the modern evolutionary synthesis did not start until the 1920s, by which time statistics had become advanced enough to cope with genetics and evolution.

Related Topics:
Charles Darwin - 1809 - 1882 - Natural selection - Origin - Heredity - Francis Galton - Modern evolutionary synthesis - 1920s - Statistics

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