Gregor Mendel

Born on July 20, 1822, in Heinzendorf in the Austrian Empire (now Hynčice in the Czech Republic), Gregor Mendel became an Augustinian friar at St. Thomas' Abbey in Brno. He studied science and mathematics and later taught, bringing unusual patience and precision to his scientific work.

In the 1850s and 1860s, he carried out his famous experiments on pea plants, tracking how traits such as flower color and seed shape passed from one generation to the next. From these results, he identified basic patterns of inheritance that later became known as Mendelian genetics, earning him recognition as a founding figure in the science of heredity.

Mendel died on January 6, 1884. During his lifetime, his research was not widely celebrated, but it was rediscovered years later and became central to modern biology.