Gregor Mendel: The Friar Who Grew Peas

Gregor Mendel: The Friar Who Grew Peas
by Cheryl Bardoe

Growing up in current day Czech Republic to a farmer, Gregor Mendel was close to nature and spent time noticing many things. He loved learning, so even though putting him through school was a sacrifice for his family, Gregor made sure he could continue learning. At times this meant Gregor missed meals regularly, as there was not enough money for school and food. Gregor was soon sent to a more rigorous school farther from home and had to board there away from his family. When Gregor was eighteen, his father broke his back, and any financial support he received from his family was over. But Gregor was resourceful and tutored other students in order to pay his way through school. Still, too often he went without eating. Gregor studied for a couple years at the University of Vienna, learning about science and mathematics, particularly about the scientific method. Finally, his hunger began to demand his attention, and Gregor made the decision to become a monk. At the time Gregor lived in the 1800's, monasteries were great centers of learning and had enough wealth to support scholarly and artistic efforts. Gregor had three square meals a day, plenty of time to study, and many other bright minds with whom to discuss his ideas.

A particularly interesting field of study to Gregor was the science of heredity. What made children like one parent in some ways and like the other parent in other ways? He decided to use what he learned about the scientific method to plan a huge experiment. He grew a variety of peas that exhibited different traits, some green and others yellow, some with smooth seeds and others with wrinkled, and so on. He picked seven different traits to study. Then he grew the peas for some time separately to be sure he had a pure batch of each trait with which to begin his experiment. After a couple years of growing, he was ready to begin in earnest. He intervened in nature's usual course of pollination by cutting off the stamen and manually dusting pollen from a plant with the opposite trait on to the egg cells of the original plant (for example, pollen from a yellow pea plant to pollinate a green pea plant). He did this very carefully with 287 pea plants and tied little bags over the plants to be sure no other pollen got to the egg cells. Then, he had to wait.

When the peas grew, the findings were fascinating! All the peas were yellow, even the ones from the green pea plants. And all the peas were smooth too! Gregor wondered, were the green peas and wrinkled peas gone forever? The next year, he let those plants cross pollinate as they normally do in nature and waited to see what would happen. This time, there were mostly yellow peas, but some green peas, and mostly smooth peas, but some wrinkled peas. Those traits hadn't disappeared, but rather had been hidden for a time! Some traits, like the color yellow, were dominant, while other traits, like the color green, were recessive. But two yellow pea plants that had a recessive or hidden green trait could still produce green peas.

Gregor continued his experiment for eight years, growing 28,000 pea plants in that time. He took careful notes and used mathematics to prove how the traits were passed from parent to child. He gathered his findings and published a research article and spoke at a university about his discovery. Unfortunately, no one seemed to understand that Gregor Mendel had discovered what we now call genes, the vehicle living things use to pass on traits to their offspring. People did not see how this new knowledge could change how they raised livestock and grains, how it could change so many things!

Soon Gregor was called to be the abbot of his abbey, and his new responsibilities took him away from his scientific work. He died without the world knowing what a great discovery he had made. About thirty years later, three men from three different countries came upon the same discovery as Gregor Mendel and happened to find his published research. They were amazed that a friar had already made the discovery!

The study of heredity, or genetics, is field of study still today as we continue to learn how genes affect the hardiness and quality of food crops, the desired traits in animals, and even the survival of species, something that Charles Darwin was writing about at the same time that Gregor Mendel was writing about the genes in his pea plants. We call Gregor Mendel the father of genetics because of his careful research.