Wednesday 20 July 2011

Gregor Mendel's 189th Birthday


Google doodle today come with a theme Gregor Mendel's 189th Birthday.
Who is Gregor Mendel?

Gregor Mendel or Gregor Johann Mendel (July 20, 1822 – January 6, 1884) was a Czech-German Augustinian friar and scientist, who gained posthumous fame as the figurehead of the new science of genetics for his study of the inheritance of certain traits in pea plants. Mendel showed that the inheritance of these 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. The independent rediscovery of these laws formed the foundation of the modern science of genetics.

Gregor Mendel, who is known as the "father of modern genetics", was inspired by both his professors at the University of Olomouc (i.e. Friedrich Franz & Johann Karl Nestler) and his colleagues at the monastery (i.e. Franz Diebl) to study variation in plants, and he conducted his study in the monastery's two hectare experimental garden, which was originally planted by the abbot Napp in 1830. Between 1856 and 1863 Mendel cultivated and tested some 29,000 pea plants (i.e., Pisum sativum). This study showed that one in four pea plants had purebred recessive alleles, two out of four were hybrid and one out of four were purebred dominant. His experiments led him to make two generalizations, the Law of Segregation and the Law of Independent Assortment, which later became known as Mendel's Laws of Inheritance.

Biography of Gregor Johann Mendel


Name             Gregor Johann Mendel
Born               July 20, 1822(1822-07-20)
                       Heinzendorf bei Odrau, Austrian Empire, current Czech Republic
Died                January 6, 1884(1884-01-06) (aged 61)
                       Brno, Moravia, Austria-Hungary
Nationality      Empire of Austria-Hungary
Fields             Genetics
Institutions      Abbey of St. Thomas in Brno
Alma mater     University of Olomouc
                      University of Vienna
Known for      Discovering genetics

More detail read in http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gregor_Mendel