The story of Mendel‘s life history and work is a curious mixture of luck and misfortune. Mendel was lucky because the experimental organism and the characters he chose to enunciate the laws of inheritance were admirably suited than any other organism; the misfortune is, the scientific world just ignored his epoch making discoveries.”
The story of success and yet a failure to get appreciation has been there in human history since time immemorial. Mendel’s is not the first and the last example.
Mendel’s work had to wait for nearly 34 years after he discovered them, and 16 years after his death, the world rediscovered his theory.
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The story of Father of Genetics began on July 22, 1822, when a boy was born to peasant parents in Moravia (then in Austria, now in Czechoslovakia). The bright boy (Johann Gregor Mendel) was sent to the upper elementary school at Leipink at the age of 11.
He did well and topped the class and was sent to Troppan High School in 1934. He completed his graduation in Aug. 1840 and did a 2 years course at Olmutz philosophical Institute. In October 1843 Mendel was admitted to the Augstinian monastery at Brunn in Moravia.
After a brief assignment as a parish priest, he went to Vienna to obtain a teacher’s certificate to become a school master.
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Mendel appeared for the teacher’s certificate examination in 1850. He succeeded in passing the examination in physics, but failed in geology.
However the chairman of examinations, recognizing Mendel’s worth, recommended his admission to the University of Vienna. Here Mendel studied zoology, systematic botany, palaeontology, physics and mathematics from 1851-1853.
In 1854 Mendel joined the Brunn Modern School as a Teacher of physics and natural history. In 1856 he appeared again for a teacher’s certificate, but failed again. However he continued teaching for 12 more years and then got elected to the abbot.
Mendel began his work on pea plants in 1856 and continued his work up to 1863. He conducted all his experiments in the monastery garden each summer.
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He read his report on pea plants in a paper entitled “Experiments on plant hybridization” at the Brunn Natural history society in 1864. The paper was published in the proceedings in 1866.
The proceedings were exchanged between 120 other societies all over the world. But unfortunately none recognised the genius of Mendel, or the originality of his work.