Gregor Mendel, a Czech-Austrian monk, was born July 22nd, 1822, in the town of Heinzendorf, Austrian Empire. After working as a gardener in his youth, Mendel was encouraged by his professors to study variation in plants, since he was particularly interested in the subject. He joined a monastery where he studied inheritance of traits in pea plants in the experimental garden. Cultivating and testing over 28,000 pea plants, Mendel grew progeny side by side to see if traits were passed from generation to generation. His experiments, which proved that genetic traits do exist and are passed through generations, gave birth to the idea of heredity. Despite the fact that his work was largely ignored until the early 20th Century, Mendel is now referred to as the Father of Genetics. Mendel was an avid lover of nature and was also interested in evolution and meteorology.

*posted July 18 - July 22, 2005