Gregor Mendel, a German-Czech biologist, meteorologist, mathematician, and Augustinian friar, is best known as the founder of the modern science of genetics. His most significant contributions include: 1. **Foundation of Genetics**: Mendel was the first to lay the mathematical foundations of genetics. His experiments with pea plants allowed him to discover the fundamental laws of inheritance. 2. **Mendelian Inheritance**: He deduced that genes come in pairs and are inherited as distinct units, one from each parent. This principle formed the basis of Mendelian inheritance. 3. **Work on Pea Plants**: Mendel's use of pea plants in his experiments was pivotal. He observed how traits were passed on from parents to offspring by cross-breeding pea plants with different genetic traits. 4. **Discovery of Invisible "Factors"**: His work in 1866 demonstrated the actions of invisible "factors" — now known as genes — in predictably determining the traits of an organism. Mendel's work was revolutionary because it changed how traits and heredity were understood, paving the way for the field of genetics to develop. [[060 People MOC]]