Gregor Mendel's garden (lower right) at the Abbey of Saint Thomas,Brno,Czech Republic. It was here that the Austrian botanist Gregor Johann Mendel (1822-1884),founder of genetics,conducted his breeding experiments with pea plants. He bred over 30,000 plants from 1856- 1863,and discovered the statistical laws of heredity. From his results,he postulated the existence of a unit of heredity that is now called the gene. Mendel was the sixth abbot (from 1868) of this Augustinian monastery. The Abbey houses a collection of Mendel relics (the Mendelianum). A new exhibition,The Genius of Genetics,opened here in May 2002 |