Gregor Johann Mendel (1822–1884) was born to a farming family at Heinzendorf in Austrian Silesia, entered the Augustinian monastery of St Thomas at Altbrünn (Brno) in 1843 and was ordained priest in 1847. After studying physics and natural science at the University of Vienna (1851–1853) he taught at the Brünn Realschule and carried out his hybridisation experiments in the monastery garden from about 1856; he became abbot in 1868 and died in 1884. William Bateson (1861–1926), a Cambridge zoologist who had studied variation in animals and plants, read Mendel's paper in 1900, became the chief English advocate of Mendelism, coined the word 'genetics', and in 1910 became the first director of the John Innes Horticultural Institution.
Gregor Mendel's 'Experiments in Plant Hybridisation' was read to the Natural History Society of Brünn (now Brno, in the Czech Republic) at its meetings of 8 February and 8 March 1865 and printed in the Society's proceedings, which appeared in 1866. Mendel, an Augustinian friar and schoolteacher, reported eight years of crossing varieties of the garden pea in his monastery garden.
