Mendel

MENDEL Johann (Johann Gregor Mendel, 1822-84), the famous creator of the fundamental laws of heredity in the present day. An entire field of science concerning heredity, based on the regularities discovered by M., bears the name Mendelism (see). Son of a peasant from the German part of Austrian Silesia - Johann M. after graduating from the gymnasium in Troppau and the philosophical classes in Olmütz (1843) entered as a novice the Augustinian monastery in Brünn. Here he received the name Gregor. In 1851-1853 he studied natural sciences in Vienna. In 1854 he became a teacher of physics in the Brünn Realschule. The results of his famous experiments on plant hybrids, which led him to the discovery of the fundamental laws of heredity, he published in 1866 (Verhandlungen des naturforschenden Vereins in Brünn, Vol. IV); in 1870 he published a work on certain hybrids of Hieracium obtained by artificial fertilization (ibid., Vol. VIII). The significance of Mendel's laws was appreciated only 35 years later. In 1900, Correns, Tschermak and de Vries simultaneously 'rediscovered' the work of M., and his laws became the beginning of the powerful development of the science of heredity. Both works mentioned above by M. were published in Russian in the series 'Classics of Natural Science' (M.-P., 1923, and reissued M.-L., 1935), as well as in the collection: Sharpe O., Noeden Ch. and Mendel G., Selected Works on Plant Hybrids, M.-L., 1935. In 1910 a monument to M. was erected in Brünn (see also Mendelism).