Q 01/05

Who traced inheritance patterns in pea plants and is called the founder of modern genetics?

A) Charles Darwin

B) Hugo de Vries

C) Gregor Mendel

D) Francis Galton

Answer · why

C) Gregor Mendel

Mendel presented his pea results in Brno in 1865; Darwin never read the paper.

Q 02/05

Mendel belonged to which religious order?

A) Jesuits

B) Benedictines

C) Augustinians

D) Franciscans

Answer · why

C) Augustinians

He entered St Thomas's Abbey in Brno on his physics teacher's advice and later became its abbot.

Q 03/05

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

A) 1,800

B) 8,000

C) 18,000

D) 28,000

Answer · why

D) 28,000

Most were pea plants, Pisum sativum, chosen because their traits came in clear either/or forms.

Q 04/05

In which year was Mendel's work rediscovered by de Vries, Correns and von Tschermak?

A) 1900

B) 1905

C) 1910

D) 1920

Answer · why

A) 1900

Three botanists independently reached the same conclusions and then found Mendel had beaten them by 35 years.

Q 05/05

Who coined the word 'genetics' in 1905?

A) Thomas Hunt Morgan

B) William Bateson

C) Wilhelm Johannsen

D) August Weismann

Answer · why

B) William Bateson

He took it from the Greek genetikos and popularized it at a plant hybridization conference in London the next year.