Gregor Mendel
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Gregor Johann Mendel |
Gregor Johann Mendel (
July 20[July 20 is his birthday; often mentioned is July 22, the date of his baptism.],
1822 –
January 6,
1884) was an
Augustinian abbot who is often called the "father of
genetics" for his study of the
inheritance of
traits in
pea plants. Mendel showed that the inheritance of traits follows particular
laws, which were later named after him. The significance of Mendel's work was not recognized until the turn of the
20th century. Its rediscovery prompted the foundation of genetics.
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Johann- memorial plaque in Olomouc |
Mendel was born on July 20, 1822, in a
German-speaking family of
Heinzendorf in
Silesia, part of the
Austrian Empire (now Hynčice in the
Czech Republic) and was baptized 2 days later. During his childhood Mendel worked as a gardener, and as a young man attended the
Philosophical Institute in
Olomouc. In 1843 he entered the
Augustinian Abbey of
St. Thomas in
Brno. Born Johann Mendel, he took the name Gregor upon entering monastic life. In 1847 he was
ordained as a
priest. In 1851 he was sent to the
University of Vienna to study, returning to his abbey in 1853 as a teacher, principally of
physics.
Gregor Mendel, who is known as the "father of genetics", was inspired by both his professors at university and his colleagues at the monastery to study variation in plants. He commenced his study in his monastery's experimental garden. Between 1856 and 1863 Mendel cultivated and tested some 28,000
pea plants. His experiments brought forth two generalizations which later became known as
Mendel's Laws of Inheritance.
Mendel's attraction to research was based on his love of nature. He was not only interested in plants, but also in meteorology and theories of evolution. Mendel often wondered how plants obtained atypical characteristics. On one of his frequent walks around the monastery, he found an atypical variety of an ornamental plant. He took it and planted it next to the typical variety. He grew their progeny side by side to see if there would be any approximation of the traits passed on to the next generation. This experiment was "designed to support or to illustrate
Lamarck's views concerning the influence of environment upon plants." He found that the plants' respective offspring retained the essential traits of the parents, and therefore were not influenced by the environment. This simple test gave birth to the idea of heredity.
Mendel read his paper, "
Experiments on Plant Hybridization", at two meetings of the
Natural History Society of Brünn in
Moravia in 1865. When Mendel's paper was published in 1866 in
Proceedings of the Natural History Society of Brunn, it had little impact and was cited about three times over the next thirty-five years.
Elevated as
abbot in 1868, his scientific work largely ended as Mendel became consumed with his increased administrative responsibilities, especially a dispute with the civil government over their attempt to impose special taxes on religious institutions. [
1]
Mendel died on
January 6,
1884, in
Brno,
Austria-Hungary (now
Czech Republic), from chronic
nephritis.
It was not until the early
20th century that the importance of his ideas was realized. In 1900, his work was rediscovered by
Hugo de Vries and
Carl Correns. Though
Erich von Tschermak was originally also credited with rediscovery, this is no longer accepted as he did not understand Mendel's laws. Mendel's results were quickly replicated, and genetic linkage quickly worked out. Biologists flocked to the theory, as while it was not yet applicable to many phenomena, it sought to give a
genotypic understanding of heredity which they felt was lacking in previous studies of heredity which focused on
phenotypic approaches. Most prominent of these latter approaches was the
biometric school of
Karl Pearson and
W.F.R. Weldon, which was based heavily on statistical studies of phenotype variation. The strongest opposition to this school came from
William Bateson, who perhaps did the most in the early days of publicizing the benefits of Mendel's theory (the word "
genetics", and much of the discipline's other terminology, originated with Bateson). This debate between the biometricians and the Mendelians was extremely vigorous in the first two decades of the twentieth century, with the biometricians claiming statistical and mathematical rigor, while the Mendelians claimed a better understanding of biology. In the end, the two approaches were combined as
the modern synthesis of evolutionary biology, especially by work conducted by
Ronald Fisher in 1918.
His experimental results have later been the object of considerable dispute. The renowned statistician
R. A. Fisher analyzed the results of the F1 (first filial) ratio and found them to be implausibly close to the exact ratio of 3 to 1.
[Fisher, R. A. (1936). "Has Mendel's work been rediscovered?" Annals of Science 1:115-137.] Only a few would accuse Mendel of
scientific malpractice or call it a
scientific fraud — reproduction of his experiments has demonstrated the accuracy of his hypothesis — however, the results have continued to be a mystery for many, though it is often cited as an example of
confirmation bias, and he is generally suspected of having "smoothed" his data to some degree (not knowing about the importance of blind classification). The fact that his reported results concentrate on the few traits in peas, which are determined by a single gene, has also suggested that he may have censored his results, otherwise he would have stumbled across
genetic linkage.
The standard
botanical author abbreviation Mendel is applied to
species he described.
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 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 half-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.
Mendel's last remaining relatives now reside in the United States under the surname of Phillips. The last survivor holding the name of Mendel died in September of 2004.
*
William Bateson Mendel's Principles of Heredity, a Defense, First Edition, London: Cambridge University Press, 1902.
On-line Facsimile Edition: Electronic Scholarly Publishing, Prepared by Robert Robbins* Robin Marantz Henig,
Monk in the Garden: The Lost and Found Genius of Gregor Mendel, the Father of Genetics, Houghton Mifflin, May, 2000, hardcover, 292 pages, ISBN 0395977657; trade paperback, Houghton Mifflin, May, 2001, ISBN 0618127410
* Robert Lock,
Recent Progress in the Study of Variation, Heredity and Evolution, London, 1906
*
Reginald Punnett,
Mendelism, Cambridge, 1905
*
Curt Stern and Sherwood ER (
1966)
The Origin of Genetics.
*
Colin Tudge In Mendel's footnotes ISBN 0099288753 book about Gregor Mendel
*
Bartel Leendert van der Waerden Mendel's experiments Centaurus 12, 275-288 (1968) refutes allegations about "data smoothing"
* James Walsh,
Catholic Churchmen in Science, Philadelphia: Dolphin Press, 1906
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The Augustinian Abbey of St Thomas, Brno. |
*
List of Austrian scientists*
Mendelian inheritance*
Mendel University of Agriculture and Forestry Brno (named after Mendel since 1994)
*
Mendel Polar Station in
Antarctica*
Mendelweb**
Mendel's Paper in English*
Mendel Museum of Genetics*
1913 Catholic Encyclopedia entry, "Mendel, Mendalism"*
Online Mendelian Inheritence in Man*
Augustinian Abbey of St. Thomas at Brno
