gregor mendel
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Although Gregor Mendel was an Augustinian monk who taught natural science to high school students, he spent most of his spare time doing experiments. At the time, his work was so brilliant and unprecedented that it took the rest of society and the scientific community thirty or forty years to catch up and understand it. His work on the theories of heredity, based along pea plants, is very well known to any student of biology.
His love of nature was what influenced most of his research. Not only was he interested in heredity and plants, but meteorology and theories of evolution also fascinated him. Because Mendel often wondered how plants got atypical characteristics, he experimented on an atypical variety of an ornamental plant. He planted it next to a typical variety and he grew them side by side to see if there would be any traits passed on to the next generation. The experiment was "designed to support or illustrate Lamarcks's views concerning the influence of environment upon plants." He discovered that the plants' natural offspring gained the essential traits of the parents. Therefore, they were not influenced by the environment...