MENDEL, GREGOR. - Of the Hermits of St. Augustine, b. at Heinzendorf near Odrau (Czechoslovak Silesia) on 22 July 1822, d. at Brno on 6 Jan. 1884.
In 1843 he became an Augustinian friar and entered the Convent of St. Thomas at Brno, changing his baptismal name of Johann to that of Gregor; there in 1847 he was ordained a priest. In 1851 he enrolled at the University of Vienna, where he attended courses in physics, mathematics and natural sciences; he then taught physics and natural sciences at the Higher Technical School of Brno; in 1868 he was elected prior of the Convent of St. Thomas.
His name is linked to the hybridization experiments carried out on peas, beans and Hieracium, which constitute the basis of genetics (v.) and precisely that part which, from his name, is called Mendelism. The results were published in the Verhandlungen des Naturforschenden Vereins in Brno, under the titles: Versuche über Pflanzenhybriden (4 [1865]) and Über einige aus künstlicher Befruchtung gewonnene Hieraciumbastarde (8 [1869]), but although he had also communicated them by letter to Nägeli, both because of the limited circulation of the journal and because the times were not ripe to understand them, they had little resonance. He also carried out hybridization experiments between various races of bees, which he never published; some works on meteorology, however, saw the light. From 1868 onward, having been elected prior, he no longer had the time or the means to conduct experiments. In 1900 three botanists, De Vries, a Dutchman, E. Tschermak, an Austrian, and K. E. Correns, a German, repeated, independently and without knowing M.'s works, his experiments, arriving at the same results. As soon as they learned of the work of their predecessor, however, they recognized its priority, and indeed Tschermak in 1901 republished his works in the collection of Ostwald's Klassiker der exakten Wissenschaften (121, Leipzig) and in 1905 Correns published in Berlin the G. M. Briefe an Carl Nägeli (1866-73). Mendelism derives from the so-called "laws of M.," which were deduced by later scholars starting from his research, and are generally set out in the following way: 1st law or law of dominance. When two individuals that differ in one character are crossed, the hybrids all turn out alike and only one character manifests itself. The two characters are called antagonists or allelomorphs; one is "dominant," the other "recessive." 2nd Law or law of segregation. When the sexual elements are formed in an organism, the two carriers of each character (called "genes" or "factors") separate and pass, one into one half, the other into the other half of the sexual elements. 3rd Law or law of independence. The different characters found in an individual are all independent of one another.