50 Fun Facts About Gregor Mendel

Mendel was abbot of St Thomas' Abbey in which city, then in Moravia?

The abbey's two-hectare garden was where the pea experiments took place.

Mendel was born in 1822 in which region of the Austrian Empire, now part of the Czech Republic?

His birthplace, Heinzendorf, is now the village of Hyncice, and the farmhouse is a museum.

Mendel was born Johann. He took the name Gregor on joining which religious order?

He admitted that monastic life spared him 'perpetual anxiety about a means of livelihood'.

Mendel's pea experiments began in 1856 and ran until which year?

In that time he cultivated and tested some 28,000 plants.

How many characteristics of the pea plant did Mendel study?

They covered plant height, pod shape and colour, seed shape and colour, and flower position and colour.

When Mendel crossed true-breeding peas of two seed colours, what did the first-generation offspring show?

All the seeds were yellow; green reappeared only in the next generation, one in four.

In the second generation, green peas reappeared in what ratio to yellow?

The famous 3:1 ratio underlies his law of segregation.

Mendel coined the term 'recessive' and which partner term?

In his example yellow was the dominant seed colour and green the recessive.

In which year did Mendel publish his paper on plant hybridization?

It was cited only about three times in the next thirty-five years.

In which year were Mendel's laws finally rediscovered?

Three researchers from three countries published within two months of each other.

Which Dutch botanist was among the rediscoverers of Mendel's work in 1900?

He probably did not understand his own results until he read Mendel, and later lost interest in Mendelism.

As a boy on the family farm, Mendel worked as a gardener and studied what?

He kept bees at the monastery for the rest of his life.

Struggling to pay for his studies, Mendel was helped by his younger sister Theresia, who gave him what?

He later helped support her three sons, two of whom became doctors.

Mendel said the monastic life spared him 'perpetual anxiety about a means of' what?

Becoming a monk let the son of a struggling farmer get an education for free.

Mendel twice failed which section of the exam to become a certified high-school teacher?

He failed in 1850 and again in 1856, and taught as a substitute instead.

Which abbot sponsored Mendel's studies at the University of Vienna in 1851?

Napp later warned him off the peas, reporting that the Bishop giggled at the idea.

Who was Mendel's physics professor at Vienna?

Mendel returned to the abbey in 1853 to teach, principally physics.

From 1840 to 1843 Mendel studied at the Philosophical Institute of which university?

Illness cost him a year there, as it had four months at his gymnasium in Troppau.

In summer 1862 Mendel joined a group tour to which two cities, visiting the International Exhibition?

The trip may have influenced the final stage of his hybridisation research.

After becoming abbot, Mendel's science largely ended because of a long government dispute over what?

His successor burned his papers to draw a line under the row.

Mendel died in Brno in 1884 of what?

He was 61.

Which Czech composer played the organ at Mendel's funeral?

Janacek was then organist and choirmaster in Brno.

What did the abbot who succeeded Mendel do with his papers?

The aim was to end the disputes over taxation once and for all.

Mendel's genome, sequenced after his 2021 exhumation, showed a predisposition to what?

The exhumation for his 200th birthday also put his height at 168 cm.

Roughly how large was the monastery's experimental garden where Mendel grew his peas?

Aleksander Zawadzki helped with the experimental design.

According to Abbot Napp, how did the Bishop react on hearing of Mendel's detailed pea genealogies?

Napp wrote to discourage the work; Mendel carried on regardless.

About how many plants did Mendel cultivate and test between 1856 and 1863?

Most were the common pea, Pisum sativum.

Which trait did Mendel focus on first?

Seeds were either angular or round.

Mendel's two generalisations were the Law of Segregation and the Law of what?

Together they became known as Mendel's Laws of Inheritance.

Mendel presented his paper 'Experiments on Plant Hybridization' at two 1865 meetings of which body?

It got a few kind mentions in local newspapers and was otherwise ignored.

Roughly how many times was Mendel's paper cited in the thirty-five years after publication?

It was read as a paper about hybridisation rather than inheritance.

Which famous contemporary, working on inheritance himself, never learned of Mendel's paper?

Darwin's own theory of pangenesis failed; genetics might have arrived decades earlier had he read Mendel.

About how many scientists listened to Mendel's two 1865 lectures?

None of them appears to have grasped the implications.

With which leading biologist did Mendel correspond, only to find he too missed the discovery?

Nageli steered him toward hawkweed, which only muddied the waters.

Mendel reportedly told a friend, 'My time will' what?

He said it to Gustav von Niessl; it took until 1900 to prove him right.

In Mendel's day, biologists thought each parent's traits were averaged. What was this idea called?

Cases that look like blending are now explained by many genes acting together.

Who coined the word 'genetics' and did most to publicise Mendel's theory in its early days?

He fought the biometric school of Pearson and Weldon through the 1900s and 1910s.

Which statistician argued in 1936 that Mendel's data fit the 3:1 ratio too well to be true?

Later scholars have argued Fisher misread the experiments and that no fraud is proven.

Fisher described Mendel's alleged observations as 'abominable', 'shocking' and what?

The resulting puzzle is known as the Mendelian paradox.

Besides peas, Mendel published a study of which other genus, whose results baffled him?

The first generation was wildly variable and many offspring were identical to the mother plant.

Why, as realised decades later, did Mendel's second study plant not match his pea results?

Apomixis meant the offspring were clones of the mother.

Mendel's monastery bees were so aggressive he was asked to get rid of them. Which breeds did he keep?

He was fond of them anyway, calling them 'my dearest little animals'.

A myth says Mendel switched to plants after his abbot objected to a priest watching which animals mate?

The abbot ran the monastery's sheep-breeding estate himself, so the story is doubtful.

Mendel founded which Austrian learned body in 1865?

Most of his published work was actually about the weather.

Under which Soviet doctrine was Mendelian genetics rejected and geneticists imprisoned or executed?

The policy, also adopted in China, contributed to massive famines.

Mount Mendel, named after him in 1970, is in which country?

It stands in the Paparoa Range on the South Island.

The last three of the seven genes behind Mendel's pea traits were finally identified in which year?

The wrinkled-seed trait, for instance, comes from an insertion in the PsSBE1 gene.

The 1930s-40s union of Mendelian genetics with Darwinian natural selection is known as what?

R. A. Fisher had begun reconciling the biometricians and the Mendelians as early as 1918.

In which year was Mendel elevated to abbot of his monastery?

Administrative duties, especially a fight with the government over taxing religious institutions, then largely ended his science.

Which German botanist joined Hugo de Vries as an accepted rediscoverer of Mendel's laws in 1900?

Tschermak was once credited too, but that is no longer accepted because he did not grasp Mendel's laws.