Gregor Mendel, the Scientist Monk
His Plant-Breeding Research Aided the Understanding of Heredity
Nov 11, 2009
Gregor Mendel was born in 1822 in what would come to be know as the Sudentenland of the Czech Republic. He was the son of peasants who was raised enjoying no privileged or even middle-class upbringing.
In elementary school Mendel was quickly recognized as a gifted student. His sister Theresia sacrificed her dowry in order to send young Gregor on to high school where his intellectual abilities again gained him the attention of his instructors. Mendel never forgot the generosity of his sister and made it his duty to support her sons both financially and emotionally throughout his life.
Mendel Enters the Monastery
After completing high school, and with no extra money to pay for further education, Mendel applied for the priesthood, a decision common for young men of limited means who desired an education. The monastery he was assigned to in Brunn was a scholarly Augustinian order where Mendel fit right in.
The Augustinians were the most liberal of the religious orders in the Catholic Church and Mendel found himself in a monastery that was more like a college dormitory. He was sent to the University of Vienna where he earned enough credits to teach physics and natural sciences at the monastery.
Mendel was practicing science at a time when the question of evolution was the focus of much discussion among intellectuals in Europe. The Catholic Church in central Europe was working to modernize and become knowledgeable in the natural sciences, the effect of which was to make Vienna, the hub of the Hapsburg Empire, a center for scientific thought. This attitude made it acceptable for a monk like Mendel to became interested in scientific research that dealt with the disappearance of a species or its transition into another.
Mendel’s Research Begins
Mendel returned to the monastery in 1853 where he devoted himself to scientific research and observed a wide range of natural phenomena. It was in 1856 that Mendel began a seven-year research study on plant-breeding where he grew pea plants in the monastery garden and eventually set new standards for biological experimentation.
His scientific methodology and record-keeping allowed him to report on inheritance with great precision. Mendel selected plants with traits that did not change and that looked exactly alike when self-fertilized. He then selected seven traits and began cross-pollinating the plants, carefully tracking each plant and the associated trait.
Mendel’s Statistical Analysis
Mendel stands apart from other plant-breeding researchers because of the way he subjected the results of his experiments to statistical analysis. As Mendel sorted through the seven traits he noticed traits that skipped a generation showed up one quarter of the time. The more plants he produced the closer his numbers came to a perfect 3:1 ratio of dominant/recessive traits.
Mendel proved that parents contribute equally to offspring by supplying traits that have no effect on each other. Each trait remains pure and is expressed in later generations exactly as it was in preceding generations. It refuted one theory of inheritance that had traits in succeeding generations being influenced less and less by preceding generations.
This also implied that the appearance of a trait was governed solely by chance, the traits sorting themselves out randomly. His research ultimately helped define the theories of heredity and natural selection. In doing so he founded the scientific field of genetics.
Mendel’s Later Years
Mendel’s opportunities for scientific research lessened after being elected Abbot at the Monastery of St. Thomas in Brunn in 1868. His time became consumed with the day-to-day responsibilities of running a large monastery as well as serving on the Provincial Assembly.
None the less, Mendel’s scientific mind kept him interested in the observation of nature as the years progressed, becoming an expert meteorologist and a founding member of the Austrian Meteorological Society. As he aged, Mendel’s health declined until he died in his sleep on January 6, 1884.
Sources
Carlson, Elof Axel. Mendel’s Legacy, The Origin of Classical Genetics. Cold Spring
Harbor, N.Y.: Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press, 2004
Cox, T.M. Mendel and His Legacy. 2 May 2005
<http://qjmed.oupjournals.org/cgi/content/full/92/4/183>
Gribbin, John, and Mary Gribbin. Mendel in 90 Minutes. London: Constable, 1997
Henig, Robin Marantz. The Monk in the Garden: The Lost and Found Genius of
Gregor Mendel, the Father of Genetics.
Iltis, Hugo. Life of Mendel. New York: W.W. Norton & Co., 2004
McClellen, James E. III, and Harold Dorn. Science and Technology in World History.
Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1999
Mills, Cynthia. The Theory of Evolution. New Jersey, Wiley & Sons, 2004
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