Gregor Johann Mendel (20 July 1822 – 6 January 1884) was a
German-speaking Moravianscientist and
Augustinian friar who gained posthumous fame as the founder of the modern
science of
genetics. Though farmers had known for centuries that crossbreeding of animals and plants could favor certain desirable
traits, Mendel's
pea plant experiments conducted between 1856 and 1863 established many of the rules of
heredity, now referred to as the laws of
Mendelian inheritance.