The Austrian priest and botanist Gregor Johann Mendel laid the foundations for such a science as genetics. He mathematically deduced the laws of genetics, which are now called by his name.

Johann Mendel was born on July 22, 1822 in Heisendorf, Austria. As a child, he began to show interest in the study of plants and environment. After two years of study at the Institute of Philosophy in Olmütz, Mendel decided to enter a monastery in Brunn. This happened in 1843. During the rite of tonsure as a monk, he was given the name Gregor. Already in 1847 he became a priest.

The life of a clergyman consists not only of prayers. Mendel managed to devote a lot of time to study and science. In 1850, he decided to take the exams for a teacher's diploma, but failed, getting "A" in biology and geology. Mendel spent 1851-1853 at the University of Vienna, where he studied physics, chemistry, zoology, botany and mathematics. Upon his return to Brunn, Father Gregor nevertheless began to teach at the school, although he never passed the exam for a teacher's diploma. In 1868 Johann Mendel became abbot.

From 1856, Mendel carried out his experiments, which eventually led to the sensational discovery of the laws of genetics, in his small parish garden. It should be noted that the environment of the holy father contributed to scientific research. The fact is that some of his friends had very a good education in the field of natural science. They often attended various scientific seminars in which Mendel also participated. In addition, the monastery had a very rich library, of which, naturally, Mendel was a regular. He was very inspired by Darwin's book "The Origin of Species", but it is known for certain that Mendel's experiments began long before the publication of this work.

On February 8 and March 8, 1865, Gregor (Johann) Mendel spoke at meetings of the Natural History Society in Brunn, where he spoke about his unusual discoveries in a still unknown area (which would later become known as genetics). Gregor Mendel set up experiments on simple peas, however, later the range of experimental objects was significantly expanded. As a result, Mendel came to the conclusion that the various properties of a particular plant or animal do not just appear out of thin air, but depend on "parents". Information about these hereditary properties is transmitted through genes (a term coined by Mendel, from which the term "genetics" is derived). As early as 1866, Mendel's book Versuche uber Pflanzenhybriden (Experiments with Plant Hybrids) was published. However, contemporaries did not appreciate the revolutionary nature of the discoveries of the humble priest from Brunn.

Mendel's scientific research did not distract him from his daily duties. In 1868 he became abbot, tutor of an entire monastery. In this position, he perfectly defended the interests of the church in general and the monastery of Brunn in particular. He was good at avoiding conflicts with the authorities and avoiding excessive taxation. He was very much loved by parishioners and students, young monks.

On January 6, 1884, Father Gregor (Johann Mendel) passed away. He is buried in his native Brunn. Glory as a scientist came to Mendel after his death, when experiments similar to his experiments in 1900 were independently carried out by three European botanists who came to similar results with Mendel.

Gregor Mendel - teacher or monk?

The fate of Mendel after the Theological Institute has already been arranged. Ordained as a priest, the twenty-seven-year-old canon received an excellent parish in Old Brunn. He has been preparing for his Doctor of Divinity exams for a year now, when a major change is taking place in his life. Georg Mendel decides to change his fate rather abruptly and refuses to perform religious service. He would like to study nature and for the sake of this passion he decides to take a place in the Znaim gymnasium, where by this time the 7th grade is opening. He asks for the position of "supplement professor".

In Russia, “professor” is a purely university title, and in Austria and Germany even a first-grader mentor was called that way. The gymnasium suplent is rather, it can be translated as “ordinary teacher”, “teacher's assistant”. This could be a person who was fluent in the subject, but since he did not have a diploma, they hired him rather temporarily.

A document has also been preserved explaining such an unusual decision by Pastor Mendel. This is an official letter to Bishop Count Schafgotch from the abbot of the monastery of St. Thomas, Prelate Nappa.” Your Gracious Episcopal Eminence! By Decree No. Z 35338 of September 28, 1849, the High Imperial-Royal Land Presidium considered it a good thing to appoint Canon Gregor Mendel as a supplement at the Znaim Gymnasium. “... This canon has a God-fearing lifestyle, abstinence and virtuous behavior, his dignity is fully appropriate, combined with great devotion to the sciences ... However, he is somewhat less suitable for caring for the souls of the laity, for as soon as he finds himself at the sickbed , as from the sight of suffering, he is seized with insurmountable confusion, and from this he himself becomes dangerously ill, which prompts me to resign from him the duties of a confessor.

So, in the autumn of 1849, Canon and Supplement Mendel arrives in Znaim in order to take up new duties. Mendel receives 40 percent less than his colleagues who had diplomas. He is respected by his colleagues, his students love him. However, he teaches at the gymnasium not subjects of the natural science cycle, but classical literature, ancient languages ​​and mathematics. Need a diploma. This will allow teaching botany and physics, mineralogy and natural history. There were 2 ways to the diploma. One is to graduate from the university, the other is a shorter way - to pass in Vienna, before a special commission of the imperial ministry of cults and education, examinations for the right to teach such and such subjects in such and such classes.

Mendel's laws

The cytological foundations of Mendel's laws are based on:

Pairings of chromosomes (pairings of genes that determine the possibility of developing any trait)

Features of meiosis (processes occurring in meiosis that provide independent divergence of chromosomes with genes located on them to different pluses of the cell, and then to different gametes)

Features of the fertilization process (random combination of chromosomes carrying one gene from each allelic pair)

Scientific method of Mendel

The main patterns of transmission of hereditary traits from parents to offspring were established by G. Mendel in the second half of the 19th century. He crossed pea plants that differ in individual traits, and on the basis of the results obtained substantiated the idea of ​​the existence of hereditary inclinations responsible for the manifestation of traits. In his works, Mendel applied the method of hybridological analysis, which has become universal in the study of the patterns of inheritance of traits in plants, animals, and humans.

Unlike his predecessors, who tried to trace the inheritance of many traits of an organism in the aggregate, Mendel investigated this complex phenomenon analytically. He observed the inheritance of only one pair or a small number of alternative (mutually exclusive) pairs of traits in varieties of garden peas, namely: white and red flowers; low and high growth; yellow and green, smooth and wrinkled pea seeds, etc. Such contrasting traits are called alleles, and the terms "allele" and "gene" are used as synonyms.

For crosses, Mendel used pure lines, that is, the offspring of one self-pollinating plant, which retains a similar set of genes. Each of these lines did not show splitting of signs. It was also essential in the methodology of hybridological analysis that Mendel for the first time accurately calculated the number of descendants - hybrids with different traits, that is, he mathematically processed the results obtained and introduced the symbolism accepted in mathematics to record various crossing options: A, B, C, D and etc. With these letters he designated the corresponding hereditary factors.

In modern genetics, the following conventions when crossing: parental forms - P; hybrids of the first generation obtained from crossing - F1; hybrids of the second generation - F2, third - F3, etc. The very crossing of two individuals is indicated by the sign x (for example: AA x aa).

Of the many different traits of crossed pea plants in the first experiment, Mendel took into account the inheritance of only one pair: yellow and green seeds, red and white flowers, etc. Such crossing is called monohybrid. If the inheritance of two pairs of traits is traced, for example, yellow smooth pea seeds of one variety and green wrinkled another, then the crossing is called dihybrid. If three and more pairs of characters, crossing is called polyhybrid.

Patterns of inheritance of traits

Alleles - denoted by letters of the Latin alphabet, while Mendel called some signs dominant (predominant) and designated them in capital letters - A, B, C, etc., others - recessive (inferior, suppressed), which he designated lower case- a, b, c, etc. Since each chromosome (carrier of alleles or genes) contains only one of two alleles, and homologous chromosomes are always paired (one paternal, the other maternal), diploid cells always have a pair of alleles: AA, aa, aa, bb, bb. Bb, etc. Individuals and their cells that have a pair of identical alleles (AA or aa) in their homologous chromosomes are called homozygous. They can form only one type of germ cells: either gametes with the A allele or gametes with the a allele. Individuals that have both dominant and recessive Aa genes in the homologous chromosomes of their cells are called heterozygous; when germ cells mature, they form gametes of two types: gametes with the A allele and gametes with the a allele. In heterozygous organisms, the dominant allele A, which manifests itself phenotypically, is located on one chromosome, and the recessive allele a, suppressed by the dominant, is in the corresponding region (locus) of another homologous chromosome. In the case of homozygosity, each of the pair of alleles reflects either the dominant (AA) or recessive (aa) state of the genes, which in both cases will show their effect. The concept of dominant and recessive hereditary factors, first applied by Mendel, is firmly established in modern genetics. Later, the concepts of genotype and phenotype were introduced. The genotype is the totality of all the genes that an organism has. Phenotype - the totality of all the signs and properties of the organism, which are revealed in the process of individual development of the given conditions. The concept of phenotype extends to any signs of an organism: features of the external structure, physiological processes, behavior, etc. The phenotypic manifestation of signs is always realized on the basis of the interaction of the genotype with a complex of factors of the internal and external environment.

What contribution to biology, Austrian naturalist, botanist and religious figure, monk, founder of the doctrine of heredity, you will learn from this article.

Gregor Mendel discoveries

The twentieth century was marked by a sensational discovery in the field of biology. Three botanists Cermak, de Vries and Correns stated that 35 years ago, a certain Czech monk and scientist Gregor Mendel, who was unknown to anyone, discovered the laws of inheritance of individual traits.

It is worth noting that Mendel was born into a poor peasant family of a gardener. His parents did not have the means to give their son a decent education. Therefore, the young man graduated only from the gymnasium and dreamed of a university.

One day he went to the abbey and took monastic orders. He pursued one goal - knowledge. The monastery had a rich library, and he got the opportunity to study at the university. In addition, Gregor was fond of biology, and there was a garden near his cell. And he decided to make experiments on crossing plants. Peas acted as a test subject. For his experiments, the monk chose 7 pairs of varieties of this cultivated plant. Each pair of peas had its own difference. For example, the seeds of the first pair had a smooth structure, while the second pair had a wrinkled one; in one, the stem was no more than 60 cm, while in the second it reached 2 m; the color of the flower in one variety was white, and in the other pair - purple.

For the first three years, Mendel planted selected varieties to make sure they were free of impurities. Then the crossbreeding experiments began. During the experiments, he found that one of the plants is dominant and its characteristics suppressed the features of the second plant. Mendel called this process "recessive". So it was opened first law of heredity in biology. The following summer, he crossed the resulting red-colored hybrids with the primary variety of red-colored peas. And what was his surprise when the plant bloomed and the flowers turned out to be white. This phenomenon, the appearance of white color after one generation, Mendel called the "splitting of signs." So was discovered the second law of heredity in biology. Unfortunately, his discovery had no success. Only 140 years later, humanity appreciated his experiments in biology at their true worth.

Gregor Johann Mendel. February 3rd, 2015

Johann Mendel was born (he received the name Gregor when he was tonsured a monk) in 1822 in the small village of Gincice in Moravian Silesia. Almost the entire population of Silesia were Germans. Mendel's parents were also poor German peasants. Elementary education the future scientist received in a village school, where there were 80 children in the class. Johann helped his father with the housework, but following in the footsteps of his parents was not his calling. Naturally sensitive and in poor health, he was one of the best students at school. And he was sent to study further at the school of the Order of Piarists in Lipnik nad Becivou, after which he entered the gymnasium in Opava.
In the countryside and among the PR people, education was free. But in Opava, he already needed money. Several lean years were devastating for his family, and in 1838 an accident happened to Johann's father, he was injured while working in the forest. And here, for the first time, Mendel's instability to stress manifested itself. He was so emotional that in difficult life situations got sick. He began to develop depression and neurosis, in which he fainted. But the first difficulties, when at the age of 16 he was left without family support, were overcome. Mendel began to study with less successful students, for which he received some money for food.


In 1840, Johann Mendel entered the Faculty of Philosophy at Olomouc University. Some money was sent to him by his older sister, but they were not even enough to rent a house. Mendel tried to find students, but in Olomouc he had few acquaintances, and without a recommendation, no one wanted a teacher. Poverty and fear that it was impossible to complete his studies again led to a nervous breakdown, and Mendel went to his village for a year to restore his strength and nerves. He was helped to finish his studies in Olomouc by his younger sister, who gave him her dowry.
In 1843 Friedrich Franz, a professor at the University of Olomouc, recommended Mendel to the abbot of the Augustinian monastery of St. Thomas in Brno. Johann Mendel himself later wrote in his biography that “there was no longer any strength, therefore, after graduating from the Faculty of Philosophy, he decided to enter a monastery, which would free him from worries about his daily bread. Circumstances influenced the choice. For a poor person, but striving for knowledge, going to a monastery made it possible to study further, besides engage in self-education and, of course, live in Christian traditions.


Mendel is in the top row, second from the right.
When he was tonsured a monk, he received the name Gregor, and in 1847 he was ordained a priest. Near the temple of the Virgin Mary, where Mendel served, is the hospital of St. Anna. Mendel was supposed to be a pastor there. After 3 months he fell ill. With his sensitivity, it was impossible to constantly see the sick and suffering, he himself was on the verge of a serious nervous illness. The abbot of the monastery F. Napp decided to give Mendel another obedience. Gregor Mendel took up the monastery garden, while studying at the theological faculty and at the same time taking a course on growing fruits and grapes.
In 1849, Mendel was sent to Znojmo to teach Greek, Latin, German, and mathematics at the gymnasium. It turned out that to pedagogical activity he has great talent. And he was sent to the university in Vienna to pass the exam and get a teacher's diploma. But Gregor Mendel did not pass the exam. He flunked natural history and physics.
The abbot did not despair, he decided to help his talented monk and sent him to study at the University of Vienna at the expense of the monastery. Here Mendel first encountered scientific work. After graduating from university, he again tried to pass the exam to get a teacher's diploma. And again unsuccessfully. He was so excited that he fainted. But even without this diploma, he was taken to teach at the State Higher Polytechnic School in Brno, where he taught successfully for 14 years.

At the same time, Mendel began his studies of plants and experiments with the hybridization of peas. He stood at the base of several scientific communities in Brno. Such as the Moravian-Selesian Society for Natural History, the Society of Beekeepers and the Meteorological Society. So it cannot be said that he was engaged only in botany. For several years he conducted meteorological research, measuring air temperature, wind direction, humidity and atmospheric pressure three times a day. He was the first to describe the appearance of a tornado.
Mendel started an apiary in the monastery, studied bees, described some of their diseases, and even tried to breed new species, but was unsuccessful. But experiments with peas led to the discovery of genes and the laws of genetics. In 1862, Gregor Mendel presented his work "Experiments with Pea Hybridization" at the Natural History Society, in which he explained the principles of heredity. But the work was not accepted by the scientific community. The discoveries seemed very new and incredible. Mendel sent his work to various scientists, corresponded with Karl Nagel, professor at the Department of Plant Hybridization at the University of Munich, but it was all in vain. No one took his laws seriously. They were forgotten for several decades. Only at the beginning of the 20th century did his work attract the attention of botanists, who confirmed the discovery of genetic laws by Mendel.
In 1869, Gregor Mendel had to stop experiments with plants, his eyesight began to fall incredibly quickly. And yes, there were other problems. In 1868 Abbot F. Napp died, and Gregor Mendel was chosen as the next abbot of the Augustinian monastery. I had to deal with more problems of the monastery. In 1872, Emperor Franz Joseph awarded Gregor Mendel with a cross, an order established by the emperor for services to society and the church. In general, despite the fact that his work on genetics was not accepted by the scientific community, Mendel enjoyed great prestige as an educated, intelligent and incredibly decent person. It got to the point that in 1881 the Augustinian abbot Mendel was elected director of the Mortgage Bank.

Gregor Mendel's earthly life ended in 1884. On January 6, he died of a lung infection. It seemed that the whole city came to bury the outstanding scientist, the abbot beloved by the monks and just a kind and decent person. The funeral mass in the cathedral of the Old Brno Monastery was conducted by Leoš Janáček. And they buried Gregor Mendel in the same way as all Augustinian monks are buried: in a common tomb in the central Brno cemetery.

In 1910, on the square in front of the monastery, which now bears the name of Gregor Mendel, a monument was erected by Theodor Harlemont. True, after the Second World War, the monument was removed outside the gates of the monastery, then it was not customary to remind that an outstanding scientist, the founder of genetics, was a monk. They tried to convince everyone that faith in God and science are not compatible. Gregor Mendel completely breaks the stereotypes that many people still have.
It would seem that now it is possible to return the monument to its original place, but for some reason the city hall is in no hurry to do this. “This is a paradox,” says the abbot of the monastery Lukasz Martinets, “the more famous a person is in the world, the less interesting he is, as it were, for the city where he lived. When, finally, a society begins to respect its history and the people who left an important mark on it, then it will be possible to say that it develops spiritually and culturally.”

At the beginning of the 19th century, in 1822, in Austrian Moravia, in the village of Hanzendorf, a boy was born into a peasant family. He was the second child in the family. At birth, he was named Johann, the surname of the father of the ball Mendel.

Life was not easy, the child was not spoiled. From childhood, Johann got used to peasant labor and fell in love with it, especially gardening and beekeeping. How useful were the skills acquired in childhood.

Outstanding abilities showed up in the boy early. Mendel was 11 years old when he was transferred from a village school to a four-year school in the nearest town. He immediately proved himself there, and a year later he ended up in a gymnasium in the city of Opava.

It was difficult for parents to pay for their studies and support their son. And then misfortune befell the family: the father was seriously injured - a log fell on his chest. In 1840, Johann graduated from the gymnasium and, in parallel, the school of teacher candidates. In 1840, Mendel completed six classes at the gymnasium in Troppau (now the city of Opava) and the following year entered the philosophical classes at the university in Olmütz (now the city of Olomouc). However, the financial situation of the family during these years worsened, and from the age of 16, Mendel himself had to take care of his food. Not being able to constantly endure such stress, Mendel, after graduating from philosophical classes, in October 1843, entered the Brynn Monastery as a novice (where he received the new name Gregor). There he found patronage and financial support for further education. In 1847 Mendel was ordained a priest. At the same time, from 1845, he studied for 4 years at the Brunn Theological School. Augustine Monastery of St. Thomas was the center of scientific and cultural life in Moravia. In addition to a rich library, he had a collection of minerals, an experimental garden and a herbarium. The monastery patronized school education in the region.

Despite the difficulties, Mendel continues his studies. Now in philosophy classes in the city of Olomeuc. Here they teach not only philosophy, but also mathematics, physics - subjects without which Mendel, a biologist at heart, could not imagine his future life. Biology and mathematics! Today this combination is inseparable, but in the 19th century it seemed ridiculous. It was Mendel who was the first to continue the broad track in biology for mathematical methods.

He continues to study, but life is hard, and now the days are coming when, by Mendel's own admission, "it is beyond the power to endure such stress." And then a turning point comes in his life: Mendel becomes a monk. He does not hide the reasons that pushed him to this step. In his autobiography, he writes: “I found myself forced to take a position that frees me from worries about food.” Isn't it true, frankly? And while not a word about religion, God. An irresistible craving for science, a desire for knowledge, and not at all a commitment to religious doctrine, led Mendel to the monastery. He is 21 years old. Those who were tonsured monks, as a sign of renunciation from the world, took on a new name. Johann became Gregor.

There was a period when he was made a priest. Quite a short period. To console the afflicted, to equip the dying on their last journey. Not really - Mendel liked it. And he does everything to free himself from unpleasant duties.

Another thing is teaching. As a monk, Mendel enjoyed teaching physics and mathematics at a school in the nearby town of Znaim, but did not pass the state teacher certification exam. Seeing his passion for knowledge and high intellectual abilities, the abbot of the monastery sent him to continue his studies at the University of Vienna, where Mendel studied as a volunteer for four semesters in the period 1851-53, attending seminars and courses in mathematics and the natural sciences, in particular, the course of the famous physics K. Doppler. A good physical and mathematical background helped Mendel later in formulating the laws of inheritance. Returning to Brunn, Mendel continued teaching (he taught physics and natural science at a real school), but the second attempt to pass the certification of a teacher was again unsuccessful.

Interestingly, Mendel twice passed the exam for the title of teacher and ... failed twice! But he was the most educated person. There is nothing to say about biology, the classic of which Mendel soon became, he was a highly gifted mathematician, he loved physics very much and knew it very well.

Failure in exams did not interfere with his teaching activities. In the city school of Brno, Mendel-teachers were very much appreciated. And he taught without a degree.

There were years in Mendel's life when he turned into a recluse. But he did not kneel before the icons, but ... before the beds with peas. From 1856, Mendel began to carry out in the monastery garden (7 meters wide and 35 meters long) well-thought-out extensive experiments on crossing plants (primarily among carefully selected varieties of peas) and elucidating the patterns of inheritance of traits in the offspring of hybrids. In 1863 he completed the experiments and in 1865 at two meetings of the Brunn Society of Naturalists he reported the results of his work. From morning until evening he worked in the small monastery garden. Here, from 1854 to 1863, Mendel conducted his classical experiments, the results of which have not become outdated to this day. G. Mendel also owes his scientific success to an unusually successful choice of the object of research. In just four generations of peas, he examined 20 thousand descendants.

About 10 years there were experiments on crossing peas. Every spring, Mendel planted plants on his plot. The report "Experiments on plant hybrids", which was read to the Bryunian naturalists in 1865, turned out to be a surprise even for friends.

Peas were convenient for various reasons. The offspring of this plant has a number of clearly distinguishable features - green or yellow cotyledons, smooth or, on the contrary, wrinkled seeds, swollen or constricted beans, long or short stem axis of the inflorescence, and so on. Transitional, half-hearted "blurred" signs were not. Each time it was possible to confidently say "yes" or "no", "either - or", to deal with the alternative. And therefore there was no need to dispute Mendel's conclusions, to doubt them. And all the provisions of Mendel's theory have not been refuted by anyone and have deservedly become part of the golden fund of science.

In 1866, in the proceedings of the society, his article "Experiments on Plant Hybrids" was published, which laid the foundations of genetics as an independent science. This is a rare case in the history of knowledge when one article marks the birth of a new scientific discipline. Why is it considered so?

Work on plant hybridization and the study of the inheritance of traits in the offspring of hybrids was carried out decades before Mendel in different countries both breeders and botanists. The facts of dominance, splitting and combination of characters were noticed and described, especially in the experiments of the French botanist C. Naudin. Even Darwin, crossing varieties of snapdragons that differ in flower structure, obtained in the second generation a ratio of forms close to the well-known Mendelian splitting of 3: 1, but saw in this only a "capricious play of the forces of heredity." The variety of plant species and forms taken in the experiments increased the number of statements, but reduced their validity. The meaning or "soul of facts" (the expression of Henri Poincaré) remained vague until Mendel.

Quite different consequences followed from the seven-year work of Mendel, which rightfully constitutes the foundation of genetics. Firstly, he created the scientific principles for describing and studying hybrids and their offspring (what forms to take in crossing, how to analyze in the first and second generations). Mendel developed and applied an algebraic system of symbols and designations for features, which was an important conceptual innovation. Secondly, Mendel formulated two basic principles, or the law of inheritance of traits in a number of generations, allowing predictions to be made. Finally, Mendel implicitly expressed the idea of ​​discreteness and binarity of hereditary inclinations: each trait is controlled by a maternal and paternal pair of inclinations (or genes, as they were later called), which are transmitted to hybrids through parent germ cells and do not disappear anywhere. The inclinations of traits do not affect each other, but diverge during the formation of germ cells and then freely combine in descendants (the laws of splitting and combining traits). The pairing of inclinations, the pairing of chromosomes, the double helix of DNA - this is the logical consequence and the main path for the development of genetics of the 20th century based on the ideas of Mendel.

The fate of Mendel's discovery - a delay of 35 years between the very fact of the discovery and its recognition in the community - is not a paradox, but rather the norm in science. So, 100 years after Mendel, already in the heyday of genetics, a similar fate of non-recognition for 25 years befell the discovery of B. McClintock of mobile genetic elements. And this despite the fact that, unlike Mendel, by the time of her discovery she was a highly respected scientist and a member of the US National Academy of Sciences.

In 1868, Mendel was elected abbot of the monastery and practically retired from scientific studies. His archive contains notes on meteorology, beekeeping, and linguistics. On the site of the monastery in Brno, the Mendel Museum has now been created; a special journal "Folia Mendeliana" is published.



B. Volodin

WHAT WE KNOW ABOUT HIM WHEN HE LIVED

He lived one hundred and fifty years ago.
He lived in the Czech city of Brno, which was then called Brunn in the German way, because the Czech Republic was part of the then Austro-Hungarian Empire.

He still stands there, teacher Mendel... This marble monument in 1910 was built in Brno at the expense of scientists from all over the world.

In the Brno real school where he worked, there were about a thousand students and twenty teachers. Of these twenty teachers, one of the most beloved of a thousand "realist" boys was precisely he - the teacher of physics and natural science Gregor Mendel, "Pater Gregor", that is, "Father Gregor".
He was called that because he, Mendel's teacher, was also a monk. Monk of the Brno Monastery of St. Thomas.
It was then known about him that he was the son of a peasant - even many years after he left his native village of Hinchice, the slightly lisping accent of the area where he spent his childhood was preserved in his speech.
They knew that he was very capable and always studied brilliantly - at a rural school, then at a district school, then at a gymnasium. But Mendel's parents did not have the money to continue paying for his teachings. And he could not enter the service anywhere, because he was the son of a simple peasant. In order to make his way, Johann Mendel (from birth his name was Johann) had to enter a monastery and, according to church custom, take a different name - Gregor.
He entered the monastery of St. Thomas and began to study at the theological school. And there, too, he showed brilliant abilities and incredible zeal. He was to become a doctor of divinity - he had very little time left before that. But Father Mendel did not take exams for the degree of doctor of theology, because he was not interested in the career of a theologian.
He got something else. Achieved that he was sent as a teacher in the gymnasium small town Znojmo, in the south of Czechoslovakia.
In this gymnasium, he began to teach not the law of God, but mathematics and Greek language. However, this did not satisfy him either. From his youth, he had a different attachment: he was very fond of physics and natural science and spent a lot of time studying them.
The path of self-taught is a thorny path. A year after he began teaching at Znojmo, Mendel tried to pass the external exams for the title of teacher of physics and natural science.
He failed these examinations because, like any autodidact, his knowledge was fragmentary.
And then Mendel achieved one more thing: he achieved that the monastic authorities sent him to Vienna, to the university.
At that time, all teaching in Austria was in the hands of the church. It was important for the church authorities that the monk-teachers had the necessary knowledge. That is why Mendel was sent to the university.
He studied in Vienna for two years. And all these two years he attended classes only in physics, mathematics and natural sciences.
He again proved to be surprisingly capable - he was even hired as an assistant assistant in the department of the famous experimental physicist Christian Doppler, who discovered an important physical effect, named after him the "Doppler effect".
And Mendel also worked in the laboratory of the remarkable Austrian biologist Kollar.
He went through the real scientific school. He dreamed of doing scientific research, but he was ordered to return to the monastery of St. Thomas.
Nothing could be done. He was a monk and had to obey monastic discipline. Mendel returned to Brno, began to live in a monastery and teach experimental physics and natural science at a real school.
He was one of the most beloved teachers of this school: firstly, because he knew the subjects he taught very well, and also because he was able to explain the most complex physical and biological laws in an amazingly interesting and simple way. He explained them, illustrating his explanations with experiments. He was a monk, but speaking to his students about natural phenomena, he never referred to God, God's will and supernatural forces. Monk Mendel explained natural phenomena as a materialist.
He was a cheerful and kind person.
In the monastery, monk Gregor then held the position of "Pater Küchenmeister" - the head of the kitchen. Remembering his hungry youth, he invited poorer students to visit him and fed them.
But the students liked to visit him not at all because the teacher treated them to something tasty. Mendel grew fruit trees and beautiful flowers rare for those places in the monastery garden - there was something to marvel at.
Another teacher kept observing the weather and changes in the Sun from day to day - this was also interesting. One of his students later became a professor of meteorology and wrote in his memoirs that his teacher Mendel instilled in him a love for this science.
The disciples knew that in the corner of the garden, under the very windows of one of the monastery buildings, there was a small area fenced off - only thirty-five by seven meters. In that area, the teacher Mendel grew something completely uninteresting: ordinary peas of different varieties. The teacher devoted, really, too much work and attention to this pea. He did something with him... It seems he crossed... He did not tell his students anything about this.

SLAVA DOES NOT HURRY

He died, and pretty soon the people of Brno began to forget that a man named Gregor Mendel lived in their city. Only his students remembered him - Father Gregor was a good teacher.
And suddenly, sixteen years after his death, in 1900, fame came to Mendel. The whole world was talking about him.
It was like this.
In 1900, three scientists who studied the phenomena of heredity derived from their experiments the laws according to which, when different plants and animals are crossed, traits are inherited to offspring. And when these scientists, independently of one another, began to prepare their works for publication, then, looking through the literature, each of them unexpectedly found out that these laws had already been discovered by a teacher from the city of Brno, Gregor Mendel. Discovered in those experiments with peas that grew on a tiny plot in the corner of the monastery garden.
The teacher did not tell the boys from real school, but in Brno there was a society of nature lovers. At one of the meetings of the society, Gregor Mendel made a report "Experiments on plant hybrids." He spoke in it about the work, which took eight years.
The summary of Mendel's report was published in a journal and sent to one hundred and twenty libraries in different cities of Europe.
Why did scientists pay attention to this work only sixteen years later?
Maybe no one has ever opened a magazine before? Didn't read the report?
Why was the glory of the great scientist so slow to come to Mendel?
First you need to find out what exactly he discovered.

WHAT THE GARDEN PEA TOLD ABOUT

Children are like moms and dads. Some - more on dads. Others are more for moms. Still others - and dad and mom, or grandmother, or grandfather. Animal children are also like their parents. Plant children, too.
All this people have noticed for a very long time.
Scientists have long known about the existence of heredity.
But it is not enough for science to know that the signs of parents are inherited by their descendants. She is obliged to answer the most tricky questions: "Why is this happening?", "How is it happening?"


Mendel's laws are open on peas, but they can be seen on many plants. They crossed two types of nettle. See what the leaves look like on parents who belonged to different species, on their children - nettle hybrids - and grandchildren.

Many scientists puzzled over the mystery of heredity. It would take a very long time to retell what their assumptions were, how researchers of different times wandered, trying to understand the essence of a complex phenomenon.
But a hundred years before Mendel, the St. Petersburg botanist academician Kelreuter began to cross two different varieties of cloves. He noticed that the first generation of carnations, grown from seeds obtained by crossing, had some characteristics, such as the color of flowers, such as those of the father plant, others, such as double flowers, like those of the mother plant. There are no mixed signs. But the most interesting thing is that the second generation - some of the descendants of hybrids - did not bloom double flowers - there were signs of a grandfather plant or grandmother plant, which the parents did not have.
The same experiments were carried out over a hundred years by many researchers - the French, the British, the Germans, the Czechs. All of them confirmed that in the first generation of hybrid plants, the trait of one of the parents dominates, and the fate of grandchildren plants manifests the trait of a grandmother or grandfather, which their parent "retreated".
Scientists tried to find out by what laws the signs "recede" and appear again. They grew hundreds of hybrid plants on experimental plots, described how traits are transmitted to offspring - all at once: the shape of flowers and leaves, the size of the stem, the arrangement of leaves and flowers, the shape and color of seeds, and so on - but they could not deduce any clear patterns. .
Mendel took over the job in 1856.


This is what Mendel saw in the first, second and third generation of pea hybrids. He got them by crossing plants with red flowers and plants with white flowers.

For his experiments, Mendel chose different varieties of peas. And I decided to follow the transmission of not all at once, but only one pair of signs.
I picked up several pairs of plants with opposite characteristics, for example, peas with yellow and peas with green grains, with red and white flowers.
He cut off anthers on immature pea flowers so that the plants would not pollinate themselves, and then applied the pollen of plants with green grains to the pistils of plants with yellow grains and the pollen of plants with yellow grains to the pistils of plants with green grains.
What happened? The descendants of all plants brought yellow grains. The sign of one of the parents dominated them all.


This figure clearly shows that different traits (color and wrinkling of peas) transmitted to offspring are not related to each other.

The next year, Mendel gave these plants the opportunity to pollinate with their own pollen and, so that no accident occurred in the experiment, covered the flowers with paper insulator caps. After all, it may be that the beetles will bring someone else's pollen onto the pistil? .. Insulators protected the flowers from this. When the grains ripened in the pods, it turned out that three-quarters of these grains were yellow, and one-quarter were green, such as were not from parents, but from grandparents.
The following year, Mendel sowed these seeds again. And again it turned out that in the pods of hybrid plants grown from yellow grains, three-quarters of the grains are yellow, and a quarter is green, the same as it was no longer in plants - grandparents, but in great-grandmother or great-grandfather. And with the color of the grains and with their shape, and with the color of the flowers and their arrangement on the stem, and with the length of the stem, and with other signs, the same thing happened. Each trait was passed on to offspring, strictly obeying the same rules. And the transmission of one feature did not depend on the transmission of another.
That's all that the experiments have shown. As you can see, Mendel traced what was known before on a large number of plants.
However, he did more than his predecessors: he explained what he saw.

WHO WAS HE?

He was a teacher: he gave lessons at school, went on excursions with students, collected plants for herbariums.
He was a monk: he was in charge of the monastic kitchen, and then of the entire monastic household.

So he was in the years when he worked on the discovery of the laws of heredity.

But, sitting in the evenings at a desk covered with sheets of observation notes, the teacher Mendel became a cyberneticist. Yes, yes, now there is such a field of science - cybernetics, which studies how the processes occurring in nature are controlled, how they are regulated.
In cybernetics, there is a group of problems conventionally called "black box problems". Their meaning is as follows: some signals enter the device of unknown design. In the device - in the "black box" - they are processed and come out in a modified form.
It is known what signals were received and how they changed.
You need to find out how the device works.
This is exactly the problem that the teacher from Brno had to solve.
Mendel knew what traits the parent plants had. He became aware of how these signs were transmitted to descendants, how some of them dominated, while others receded, then reappeared.
He knew one more thing: traits were transmitted through pollen and eggs, from which the seeds of plants developed. Neither pollen nor eggs had - no matter how you look at them under a microscope - neither stems nor flowers, but they produced very different yellow or green grains - seeds. Stems similar to them grew from seeds, then flowers bloomed in a tone or other color.
And Mendel, for the first time in the history of science, realized that it is not the signs themselves, not the color and shape of flowers and seeds, that are transmitted from parent plants to child plants through pollen and eggs, but something else - particles invisible to the eye, thanks to which these signs appear. He called these particles hereditary inclinations.
He realized that each of the parent plants passes on to its offspring one deposit of each trait. These inclinations do not merge, do not form new inclinations. These inclinations are "equal in rights": one may appear, and another may appear.
Items don't disappear. If one inclination appeared in the first generation, then another one may appear in some plants of the second generation. Moreover, even some of the descendants of plants of the second generation and the descendants of their descendants also show inclinations inherited from the great-grandfather plant.
But here another question arises. If the inclinations do not disappear anywhere, then each next generation, it would seem, should accumulate many inclinations of the same trait received from fathers, mothers, grandfathers, grandmothers, great-grandfathers and great-grandmothers. And since these inclinations are material, this means that germ cells, pollen cells and eggs from generation to generation would have to increase in size if the number of inclinations in them increased exponentially all the time.
Nothing like this happened...
And then, to explain this, Mendel suggested that each sex cell always carries only one deposit of each trait, and when the egg is fertilized, when the cell is formed from which the embryo will develop, two deposits are found in it.
And when a new germ cell is formed, these inclinations apparently diverge, and in each germ cell again there is only one.
And Mendel, on the basis of his experiments, also proved that the deposit of one trait is transmitted independently of the deposit of another trait. After all, the grains of pea plants can have the color that the grandfather plant had, for example, yellow, and the shape that the grandmother plant had.
Mendel proved all this mathematically. All his proofs were very accurate, no one knew how to solve such problems at that time. And so his assumptions seemed fantastic to his contemporaries.
...Mendel made a presentation at the Brno Society of Naturalists.
The magazine with his report was published and got into one hundred and twenty university libraries in different cities of Europe.
It has been read, apparently, by many serious naturalists. But at that time, biologists did not have exact knowledge of how cell division occurs, from which amazing events this process consists.
And Mendel's work was not understood by anyone. Mendel's work was forgotten...

Years passed. In the late 70s of the XIX century, biologists learned how to stain cell nuclei.
And then it was discovered that before cell division in the nuclei, special little bodies are revealed - "chromosomes" (in Greek this word means "staining little bodies"). By observing the development of a fertilized cell, biologists have suggested that chromosomes are related to the transmission of hereditary traits.
And in 1900, Mendel's laws were rediscovered by other scientists. Then his works were read again. And it turned out that, not seeing what was happening in the nuclei of cells, Mendel created the theory of the transfer of hereditary inclinations. So a hundred years ago, a teacher of physics and biology from the Czech city of Brno laid the foundation for new science- genetics, the science of heredity.
Genetics is a very important science. It recognizes how hereditary changes in animals and plants occur. But only knowing the essence of such complex processes, it is possible to breed new breeds of animals and new varieties of plants, to prevent many hereditary diseases in people.
There have been many developments in the science of heredity over the years. Many theories arose in it, and many theories were refuted in it. But what the modest and brilliant Brno teacher understood remained unshakable.