Genetics Mendel

Gregor Mendel (1822–1884), an Augustinian friar in Brno, developed the laws of heredity through 7 years of experiments with 28,000 pea plants (1856–1863). His laws of segregation and independent assortment described how traits are inherited through discrete units (later called genes) — dominant and recessive — with mathematical precision. He submitted his findings to the Natural History Society of Brno in 1866. Mendel's work was ignored for 35 years — rediscovered in 1900 by three scientists independently. Had Darwin known of it, the synthesis of evolution and genetics might have arrived decades earlier. The discovery that DNA is the molecular basis of Mendel's 'units' (1953) completed the connection. Mendel's mathematical approach to biology pioneered quantitative genetics.