Presents the life of the geneticist, discussing the poverty of his childhood, his struggle to get an education, his life as a monk, his discovery of the laws of genetics, and the rediscovery of his work thirty-five years after its publication.

Gregor Johann Mendel is known as the father of modern genetics. He used cross-breeding to develop different kinds of peas. This allowed him to make predictions about the outcomes. These are now called Mendel's Laws of Heredity. They explain how traits are passed from generation to generation. Mendel also discovered dominant and recessive genes.

The Foundations of Genetics describes the historical development of genetics with emphasis on the contributions to advancing genetical knowledge and the various applications of genetics. The book reviews the work of Gregor Mendel, his Law of Segregation, and of Ernst Haeckel who suggested that the nucleus is that part of the cell that is responsible for heredity. The text also describes the studies of W. Johannsen on "pure lines," and his introduction of the terms gene, genotype, and phenotype. The book explains the theory of the gene and the notion that hereditary particles are borne by the chromosomes (Sutton-Boveri hypothesis). Of the constituent parts of the nucleus only the chromatin material divides at mitosis and segregates during maturation. Following studies confirm that the chromatin material, present in the form of chromosomes with a constant and characteristic number and appearance for each species, is indeed the hereditary material. The book describes how Muller in 1927, showed that high precision energy radiation is the external cause to mutation in the gene itself if one allele can mutate without affecting its partner. The superstructure of genetics built upon the foundations of Mendelism has many applications including cytogenetics, polyploidy, human genetics, eugenics, plant breeding, radiation genetics, and the evolution theory. The book can be useful to academicians and investigators in the fields of genetics such as biochemical, biometrical, microbial, and pharmacogenetics. Students in agriculture, anthropology, botany, medicine, sociology, veterinary medicine, and zoology should add this text to their list of primary reading materials.

This book profiles the life of Gregor Johann Mendel who is responsible for originating the science of genetics. After joining the Order of St. Augustine as a monk, Mendel performed experiments using pea plants, leading to remarkable discoveries about the laws of heredity.

Gregor Mendel's discoveries were so far in advance of their day that it wasn't until 50 years had passed that their importance was recognised by the scientific community. Providing an account of scientific history, this work presents the narrative through the work of the life-scientists who built their own research on Mendel's discoveries.

When Gregor Mendel passed away in 1884, not a single scholar recognized his epochal contributions to biology. The unassuming abbot of the Augustinian monastery in Brno (in today's Czech Republic) was rediscovered at the turn of the century when scientists were stunned to learn that their findings about inheritance had already been made by an unknown monk three decades earlier. A dedicated researcher who spent every spare hour in the study of the natural sciences, Mendel devised a series of brilliantly simple experiments using a plant easily grown on the monastery's grounds--the garden pea. In the course of just a few years he made the famous discoveries that later became the centerpiece of the science of heredity. In an entertaining and thoroughly informed narrative, Edward Edelson traces Mendel's life from his humble origins to his posthumous fame, giving us both a brief introduction to the fascinating science of genetics and an inspired account of what a modest man can accomplish with dedication and ingenuity. Oxford Portraits in Science is an ongoing series of scientific biographies for young adults. Written by top scholars and writers, each biography examines the personality of its subject as well as the thought process leading to his or her discoveries. These illustrated biographies combine accessible technical information with compelling personal stories to portray the scientists whose work has shaped our understanding of the natural world.

This acclaimed biography of 19th century scientist Gregor Mendel is “a fascinating tale of the strange twists and ironies of scientific progress” (Publishers Weekly). A National Book Critics Circle Award finalist In The Monk in the Garden, award-winning author Robin Marantz Henig vividly chronicles the birth of genetics, a field that continues to challenge the way we think about life itself. Tending to his pea plants in a monastery garden, the Moravian monk Gregor Mendel discovered the foundational principles of genetic inheritance. But Mendel’s work was ignored during his lifetime, even though it answered the most pressing questions raised by Charles Darwin's revolutionary book, On the Origin of Species. Thirty-five years after his death, Mendel’s work was saved from obscurity when three scientists from three different countries nearly simultaneously dusted off his groundbreaking paper and finally recognized its profound significance. From the perplexing silence that greeted his discovery to his ultimate canonization as the father of genetics, Henig presents a tale filled with intrigue, jealousy, and a healthy dose of bad timing. Though little is known about Mendel’s life, she "has done a remarkable job of fleshing out the myth with what few facts there are" (Washington Post Book World).

A Guided Study (Masterworks of Discovery)

In 1865, Gregor Mendel presented "Experiments in Plant-Hybridization," the results of his eight-year study of the principles of inheritance through experimentation with pea plants. Overlooked in its day, Mendel's work would later become the foundation of modern genetics. Did his pioneering research follow the rigors of real scientific inquiry, or was Mendel's data too good to be true—the product of doctored statistics? In Ending the Mendel-Fisher Controversy, leading experts present their conclusions on the legendary controversy surrounding the challenge to Mendel's findings by British statistician and biologist R. A. Fisher. In his 1936 paper "Has Mendel's Work Been Rediscovered?" Fisher suggested that Mendel's data could have been falsified in order to support his expectations. Fisher attributed the falsification to an unknown assistant of Mendel's. At the time, Fisher's criticism did not receive wide attention. Yet beginning in 1964, about the time of the centenary of Mendel's paper, scholars began to publicly discuss whether Fisher had successfully proven that Mendel's data was falsified. Since that time, numerous articles, letters, and comments have been published on the controversy.This self-contained volume includes everything the reader will need to know about the subject: an overview of the controversy; the original papers of Mendel and Fisher; four of the most important papers on the debate; and new updates, by the authors, of the latter four papers. Taken together, the authors contend, these voices argue for an end to the controversy-making this book the definitive last word on the subject.