On this day 200 years ago, Johann Mendel was born. He would come to be known as Gregor (the religious name he received upon entering St. Thomas's Abbey in Austria-Hungary as an Augustinian Friar) and later as the "father of modern genetics."
Mendel studied math, physics, and eventually botany in school. While conducting experiments breeding hybridized pea plants in the monastery garden and greenhouse, he discovered the principles of heredity. As one article on his life explains:
