GrEgor meNdEl

Today is Gregor Mendel's birthday.  Born in 1822, he became a friar--it was a time, however, when science wasn't consigned to professors in universities, but had plenty of gentlemen doing important experiments in areas that interested them.

As anyone who attended high school knows, he studied pea plants and discovered that traits were passed down through generations via dominant and recessive genes, as he named them.  People already had some idea of how things worked, but he put it into math, and helped explain why there wasn't blending that ended up with everything the same.

He published in the 1860s, at a time when everyone was talking about Darwin theory of evolution.  Alas, Mendel's importance was not recognized until the early 1900s, well after his (and Darwin's) death.

Ironically, as he was being rediscovered and debated in the early 20th century, many felt his research challenged Darwin.  It wasn't until the 30s and 40s, when Mendelian genetics were fused with natural selection for the modern synthesis, that it was truly understood how Mendel backed up the Darwinian model.