Gregor Johann Mendel was an Austrian biologist. He is considered one of the founders of genetics, a science that studies the laws of inheritance. Born in 1822, Heinzendorf (now Czech Republic), and died in 1884 in Brünn (now Brno in the Republic itself.) He joined the Augustinian Order and held the rectory of the Monastery of Brno. It was in the garden of the monastery where he began studying the phenomena of inheritance in plants. The relationship between the characteristics of a generation and beyond. He began his studies in pure varieties, then crossed them and recorded the characteristics of the new generation. With these observations was to establish that hereditary traits are defined by mathematical laws. Characters defined dominant and recessive inheritance, which are represented in reproductive cells. Among the most important laws, enunciated the principle of segregation or disjunction (hereditary traits of the parents do not mix, are segregated into different sex cells and remain intact) and the law of independence (each character is inherited independently .)
Despite the importance of his work, this scientist was ignored by researchers of his time. Only in 1900, several scholars of genetics, Bateson and De Vries or the value of their work.