HEREDITY 1 89 



GREGOR MENDEL AND HIS WORK * 

 HUGO ILTIS 



It is 120 years since, in a small village on the northern border of what 

 was called Austria at that time, a boy was born in a farmer's house who 

 was destined to influence human thoughts and science. Germans, Czechs 

 and Poles had settled side by side in this part of the country, quarreling 

 sometimes, but rnixing their blood continually. During the Middle Ages 

 the Alongolic Tatars invaded Europe just there. Thus, the place had been 

 a melting pot of nations and races, and, like America, had brought up fi- 

 nally a splendid alloy. The father's name was Anton Mendel; the boy was 

 christened Johann. He grew up Hke other farmers' boys; he liked to help 

 his father with his fruit trees and bees and retained from these early ex- 

 periences his fondness for gardening and bee-keeping until his last years. 

 Since his parents, although not poor compared with the neighbors, had 

 no liquid resources, the young and gifted boy had to fight his way through 

 high school and junior college (Gymnasium). Finally he came to the con- 

 clusion, as he wrote in his autobiography, "That it has become impossible 

 for him to continue such strenuous exertions. It was incumbent on him to 

 enter a profession in which he would be spared perpetual anxiety about 

 a means of livelihood. His private circumstances determined his choice of 

 profession." So he entered as a novice the rich and beautiful monastery of 

 the Augustinians of Bruenn in 1843 and assumed the monastic name of 

 Gregor. Here he found the necessary means, leisure and good company. 

 Here during the period from 1843 to 1865 he grew to become the great 

 investigator whose name is known to every schoolboy to-day. 



On a clear cold evening in February, 1865, several men were walking 

 through the streets of Bruenn towards the modern school, a big building 

 still new. One of these men, stocky and rather corpulent, friendly of coun- 

 tenance, with a high forehead and piercing blue eyes, wearing a tall hat, 

 a long black coat and trousers tucked in top boots, was carrying a manu- 

 script under his arm. This was Pater Gregor Mendel, a professor at the 

 modern school, and with his friends he was going to a meeting of the 

 Society of Natural Science where he was to read a paper on "Experiments 

 in Plant Hybridization." In the schoolroom, where the meeting was to be 

 held, about forty persons had gathered, many of them able or even out- 

 standing scientists. For about one hour Mendel read from his manuscript 

 an account of the results of his experiments in hybridization of the edible 

 pea, which had occupied him during the preceding eight years. 



Mendel's predecessors failed in their experiments on heredity because 

 they directed their attention to the behavior of the type of the species 



• Reprinted by permission of the Scientific Monthly, American Association for the 

 Advancement of Science, Copyright 1942. 



