"Like Begets Like" is a universal phenomenon of life: living beings produce offspring of their own kind. Traits such as colour of eye, colour of hair, shape of nose and type of earlobe are inherited because of the genes we receive from our parents. The branch of biology that deals with genes, genetic variation and heredity of living organisms is called genetics.
Heredity is the transmission of characters from one generation to the next. Variation refers to the differences shown by individuals of the same species and also by the offspring of the same parents. All these happen only due to chromosomes.
1. Gregor Johann Mendel – Father of Genetics
- Mendel (1822–1884) was an Austrian monk who discovered the basic principles of heredity through his experiments; these are the foundation of modern genetics.
- Born in 1822 to a family of farmers. After high school (age 18) he entered the Augustinian Monastery at Brunn as a priest, then trained in physics, mathematics and natural science at the University of Vienna.
- He returned to the monastery in 1854, worked as a priest and taught in high school.
- He experimented on the garden pea plant for about seven years (1856 to 1863), working on nearly 10000 pea plants of 34 different varieties.
- He chose 7 pairs of contrasting characters for his study.