Gregor Johann Mendel (20 July 1822 – 6 January 1884) was a scientist, Augustinian Friar, and abbot. Born to a German-speaking family in the Austrian Empire (a part that is toay's Czech Republic), he drew on the long-standing experience of cross-breeding and hybridization. His experiments with pea plants established many of the rules of heredity still accepted today. Mendel's observations of inheritance led him to coin the terms "recessive" and "dominant" to describe the transmission of genetic traits.

But the significance of his work was not recognized until the turn of the 20th century when his laws were rediscovered and independently verified. Now he is considered the "father of genetics."