Gregor Mendel was born on July 22, 1822, in Heizendorf, Austria. He was an Austrian monk who found actual proof of the existence of genes, and is considered to be the father of genetics, though his work was relatively unappreciated until the early 1900's.

Mendel changed his name when he entered into the Augustinian Monastery in Brno, Austria. There is became an ordained priest in 1847, and in 1851 entered into the University of Vienna to train to be a teacher of Mathematics and Biology. Gregor failed the elementary teachers exam and returned to Brno in 1845 and became a teacher at a technical high school, where he taught mathematics, natural science and general science. Toward the end of his life, in 1868, Mendel was promoted in the monastery to Abbot. He died on January 6, 1884.

During the middle of Mendel's life, Mendel did groundbreaking work into the theories of heredity. Using simple pea pod plants, Mendel studied seven basic characteristics of the pea pod plants. By tracing these characteristics, Mendel discovered three basic laws which governed the passage of a trait from one member of a species to another member of the same species. The first law states that the sex cells of a plant may contain two different traits, but not both of those traits. The second law stated that characteristics are inherited independently from another (the basis for recessive and dominant gene composition). The third theory states that each inherited characteristic is determined by two hereditary factors (known more recently as genes), one from each parents, which decides whether a gene is dominant or recessive. In other words, if a seed gene is recessive, it will not show up within the plant, however, the dominant trait will. Mendel's work and theories, later became the basis for the study of modern genetics, and are still recognized and used today.

His work led to the discovery of particulate inheritance, dominant and recessive traits, genotype and phenotype, and the concept of heterozygousity and homozygousity. Unfortunately, Gregor Mendel was not recognized for his work by his scientific peers.

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