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Mendel and his work
Johann Mendel was the pioneer of classical geneticists. He was born in July 22, 1822 in Heinzendorf in Austrian Silesia, where his father, Anton Mendel was the owner of a small farm. He graduated from the Gymnasium in 1840. In his youth, he led a disastrous, poor, difficult and sad life. In October 1843, Mendel was admitted to the Augustinian monastery at Brunn in Moravia (a Czechoslovakian town) where he took the name Gregor as novice and besides performing his other duties, he took keen interest in natural sciences.
In the year 1846, Johann Gregor Mendel attended courses of agriculture, pomiculture and viniculture at the Philosophical Academy in Brunn. After finishing his theological studies in 1848, he was appointed as a substitute teacher in the Imperial Royan Gymnasium in Znaim in the year 1849.
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From 1851 to 1853, he studied mathematics and natural science in the university of Vienna. In 1853, he took the membership of Zoological-Botanical Society of Vienna.
On April 5, 1.854, he wrote a letter to Vienna Zoological-Botanical Society about damage by pea-weevil, Bruchus pisi and thus, showed his interest in peas. In May 1854, he was appointed to the post of supply teacher of physics and natural science in a higher secondary school of Brunn. He continued to hold this post until 1868 when he was elected abbot.
In the spring of 1856, he began experimental crossing of pea varieties.
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In 1862, Mendel became a founding member of the Brunn Natural Science Society. On February 8, 1865, he delivered his first lecture on pea experiments to Brunn Natural Science Society. )n 1866 his paper "Experiments on plant hybridization" published in volume 4 of the proceedings of the Natural Science Society. In the same year, he began experiments with other plant species. In this paper, Mendel proposed some basic genetic principles. But unfortunately his remarkable piece of work remained unattended and unappreciated upto 1900.
There were several reasons for the sad neglect of Mendel's work. These include (i) biologist's preoccupation with speculation concerning Darwin's theory of evolution "origin “ of species" which appeared in 1859; (ii) obscurity of the journal in which Mendel published his result ; and (iii) unaccoustomedness of processional biologists of ninteenth century to think in the statistical manner which Mendel introduced in the study of hybridization.
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Further, Mendel himself made his work known only to some of the most famous hybridizers of his time such as Carl Von Naegeli and Anton Kerner Yon Marilaum, but not to the younger generation of scientists who were perhaps less prejudiced against new ideas. Naegeli and Kerner knew of the Mendel's paper but they did not review it or discuss it, perhaps because they considered him an outsider and amateur. Moreover, Naegeli's negative approach in discouraging Mendel to pursue the right path becomes apparent in his insistent suggestions to Mendel to test his genetical principles on 26 species of hawk-weed (Hieracium), for which he supplied seed and plants. Mendel wasted his valuable six years on the hybridization experiments on this plant species, ruined his eye sight, but even then failed to confirm or even to test his theory.
The results of these ill-fated experiments were published in 1869, in the Proceedings of the Natural Science Society, Brunn. His defeat with Hieracium led Mendel to withhold further publication and eventually to cease scientific work. Further, this neglect of his work and other economical and physical hazards made him greatly disappointed and bitter. His health progressively degenerated and he became far too obese and began to suffer from dropsy due to heart and kidney failure. The pioneer of classical genetics, thus, died unknowingly, amidst the feelings of despair on 6th January 1884 and buried in Brunn Central Cemetery (see Dunn, 1965 ; Serra 1965).
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