Who is the Father of Genetics?

Answer: 

Gregor Johann Mendel (20 July 1822-6 January 1884) is the ‘Father of Genetics’. He was a meteorologist, mathematician, researcher, Augustinian minister and abbot of St. Thomas’ Abbey in Brünn (Brno), Margraviate of Moravia. 

Mendel belonged to a German family in the Silesian, a piece of the Austrian Domain (the present Czech Republic) and earned postmortem respect as the organizer behind the cutting-edge study of genetics. Even though the farmers of that time had experienced that through cross breeding two plants of the same species could enhance the yield of that plant, nobody gave it a serious thought as to why it was happening. Mendel on the other hand, with his brilliant mind tried to solve this mystery through his famous pea plant experiments. But like many other famous scientists, Mendel’s works were not recognized until his death.

Mendel worked with seven attributes of pea plants: plant height, pod shape and variety, seed shape and variety, and flower position and variety. Taking seed color for instance, Mendel showed that when a homozygous yellow pea plant and a homozygous green pea plant were crossed their progenies were yellow seed plants. Nonetheless, in the future, the green peas returned at a proportion of 1 green to 3 yellow. To make sense of this peculiarity, Mendel authored the expressions “dominant” and “recessive” regarding specific attributes. In the former model, the green quality, which appears to have disappeared in the next generation of that plant, is recessive and yellow is dominant.