CHAPTER XXVI 



MENDEL'S LAWS OF HEREDITY 

 Mendel's lite and character* 



J. ARTHUR THOMSON 



Gregor Johann Mendel was born in 1822, the son of well-to-do 

 peasants in Austrian Silesia. He became a priest in 1847, and studied 

 physics and natural science at Vienna from 1851 to 1853. Thence he 

 returned to his cloister and became a teacher in the Realschule at 

 Briinn. It was his hobby to make hybridisation experiments with 

 peas and other plants in the garden of the monastery, of which he 

 eventually became abbot. Apart from two papers, one dealing with 

 peas and a shorter one with hawkweeds, and some meteorological 

 observations, he does not seem to have published much. But what 

 he did publish, if small in quantity, was large in quality. He died in 

 1884. 



Mendel's discoveries 



In 1866 Gregor Johann Mendel, Abbot of Briinn, published what 

 some regard as one of the greatest of biological discoveries. After 

 many years of patient experimenting, chiefly with the edible pea, he 

 reached a very important conclusion in regard to the inbreeding of 

 hybrids, which is often briefly referred to as "Mendel's Law." His 

 publication was practically buried in the Proceedings of the Natural 

 History Society of Briinn; those who knew of it, as Nageli for instance 

 did, failed to realise its importance: in fact, Mendel's epoch-making 

 work was lost sight of amid the enthusiasm and controversy which the 

 promulgation of Darwinism (1858) had evoked. Mendel's Law seems 

 to have been rediscovered independently in 1900 by the botanists, 

 De Vries, Correns, and Tschermak ; and to Mr. Bateson we owe much, 

 not only for his recognition of the far-reaching importance of the 

 abbot's work, but also for a notable series of experiments in which he 

 has confirmed and extended it. 



' From J. Arthur Thomson, Heredity (copyright 1907). Used by special 

 permission of the publishers, John Murray, London. 



339 



