390 THE NEW INDIVIDUAL Part IV 



combined with a rare equipment of curiosity, precise observing and record- 

 ing, respect for facts and logical reasoning. His work is an inspiring example 

 of what observation and reason can achieve. He planned his experiments 

 with great care, and set them like traps to catch the facts. The basic principles 

 which he drew from them have been upheld by thousands of experimenters 

 who have followed him. 



Gregor Mendel, Founder of the Science of Genetics 



Gregor Mendel, 1822-1884, spent his boyhood on an Austrian (now 

 Czechoslovakian) farm where he grew up with orchards and gardens all 

 about him. At 21, he entered the monastery at nearby Brunn (now Brno), 

 was ordained a priest three years later, went to Vienna for a scientific train- 

 ing, returned to his home monastery, and for 14 years was a teacher of natural 

 history in Brunn Modern School. During those 14 years, he conducted the 

 experiments on peas that led him to believe that heritable characters are 

 produced by separate units, and that this separateness is a basic principle of 

 inheritance. Mendel was searching for laws that operate in creating species 

 at the same time that Charles Darwin was writing the Origin of Species. His 

 experiments and conclusions were published in a brief paper in The Pro- 

 ceedings of the Natural History Society of Brunn (1865). By this time 

 many people were fiercely attentive to the Origin of Species (published in 

 1859) and Mendel's paper went unnoticed. In addition to this, in 1868 he 

 met another handicap in being elected Prelate of Altbrunn, a high adminis- 

 trative office which consumed most of his time. With this new occupation 

 his work in genetics and the adventures of his mind were ended. 



Resurrection of a Discovery 



Mendel's conclusions remained hidden until 1900, 16 years after his death, 

 when three botanists experimenting in different countries made discoveries 

 similar to those of Mendel. In that same year, and independently of one 

 another, they found his paper. By that time, the first shock from the Origin 

 of Species had died down and the theory had begun to stimulate curiosity. 

 People were asking how plants and animals came to be different and how 

 their differences were inherited. Chromosomes had been discovered and 

 biologists were highly excited about their significance. It soon appeared that 

 these things were related to Mendel's inherited characters. Although they 

 were discovered before Mendel's death, he never mentioned them and perhaps 

 never heard of them. 



Mendel's Approach to the Problem of Inheritance 



Peas are naturally self-fertilizing in one flower. However, it is easy to 

 cross fertilize the eggs of one plant by the male cells (pollen) of another. 



