Gregor Johann Mendel

• Mendel grew up in this farm environment and finished high school Education at the age of eighteen. Thereafter he tried to become a teacher at the college in Ölmutz but did not succeed.

•  Perhaps due to this failure, or due to lack of money, he returned to his family farm where he spent one year. After that he did find work as a teacher, but it seems he could not settle down comfortably due to combined pressures of studying, teaching and some financial problems.

•  He therefore left Ölmutz (now Brno in Czechoslovakia). He started off as a substitute teacher and in 1848 was ordained as a parish priest. 

• In 1851 Mendel enteredthe University of Vienna for training in physics, mathematics and natural sciences. 

• It was at Vienna that Mendel was influenced by two scientists, Franz Unger a plant physiologist, andChristian Doppler, discoverer of the well-known Doppler effect in physics.

•  Perhaps Mendel picked up knowledge here about Kölreuter’s and Gaertner’s hybridisation experiments which formed part of Unger’s teaching courses.

•  It also seems likely that Mendel sharpened hismathematical awareness through Doppler’s influence on him. 

• After completing his studies atVienna he returned to Brunn in Moravia, Czechoslovakia in 1854 where he continued to work as priest and as a teacher in high school.

  The findings of Mendel and his laws were published in the journal Annual Proceedings of the Natural History Society of Brunn, in 1865. The paper was entitled Experiments in Plant Hybridisation. But his work was not accepted or lauded by the scientific world at that time because
  i. The journal was obscure.
  ii. His concept was far ahead of his time.
  iii. The scientists were busy with the controversy over Darwin's Theory of Origin of species and
  iv. Mendel not being very sure of his findings lacked an aggressive approach.
  Later in the year 1900, three scientists Carl Correns of Germany, Hugo de Vries of Holland and Tshermak of Austria independently rediscovered Mendel's findings and brought to light the ingenuity of father Mendel. To recognise his work, it was named as Mendel's Laws and Mendelism.