Mendel was born in Austria (in a region which belongs today to the EU country Slovakia) as the son of a poor farmer. After a short period of studies at the University of Olmütz, he was pressed by financial problems and thus he decided to enter the Order of the Catholic brotherhood of Augustinians at Brünn (today: Brno in Ceska Republica) in 1843 and studied Natural Science at the University of Vienna in 1851–1853. However, he never made an examination but taught at a “High School” in Brünn as assistant. During the whole time, he made crossing experiments with pea plants in the garden of the monastery testing more than 25,000 plants. As results of his experiments he concluded two “rules,” which were revolutionary and are still today accepted as so-called Mendel’s rules and represent basics of our present genetic research. The real importance of his findings was discovered only years after his death (1884), when the botanists Carl Correns, Erich Tschermak, and Hugo de Vries confirmed...
Keywords
These keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution.
Further Reading
Fischer RA (1936) Has Mendel’s work been rediscovered. Ann Sci 1:115–137
Novitski CE (1995) Another look at some of Mendel’s results. J Heredity 86:62–66
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2016 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg
About this entry
Cite this entry
Mehlhorn, H. (2016). Mendel, Gregor (1822–1884). In: Mehlhorn, H. (eds) Encyclopedia of Parasitology. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-27769-6_1889-2
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-27769-6_1889-2
Received:
Accepted:
Published:
Publisher Name: Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg
Online ISBN: 978-3-642-27769-6
eBook Packages: Springer Reference Biomedicine and Life SciencesReference Module Biomedical and Life Sciences