Why was gregor mendel more successful in his discoveries about trait inheritance than so many of the other scientists studying this same topic during this time?

Answer 1

Gregor Mendel's ExperimentsMendel conducted pea plant experiment; crossing different plants and came out mostly with the same result, but some had different phenotypes, i.e. roundness, color, etc. He is considered top be the "father of genetics" because he experimented with thousands of pea plants and recorded the phenotypic and genotypic traits of both using Punnet Squares.

Mendel's family were German however he was born in a part of the Austrian empire now located in the Czech Republic. He attended the University of Vienna in 1851 and later taught physics in his Augustinian abbey in Brno (in the Czech rebublic) which now opens its gardens to the public for Mendel walks.

Mendel conducted his experiments before the mode of inheritance was understood, (c1856-1863) and although we can classify his work as genetics, it was conducted well before the discovery of that DNA was the genetic material and the mode for inheritance. His record-keeping was detailed, and around 1900 it was rediscovered when science was shifting away from a blending of traits idea of inheritance towards an inheritance in discrete packages theory.

Mendel's finding showed that phenotypic traits in pea plants were inherited in discrete packages and at predictable frequencies. Mendel proposed two laws the first being the law of independent segregation in which a parent plant passed only one copy of a trait to the offspring. This law was later understood with the discovery of meiosis. His second law was the Law of independent assortment stated that these traits met randomly in the offspring. The combination of these laws in real life gave rise to the set ratios that Mendel observed in life ie 3:1 ratio for a single trait.

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Answer 2

Gregor Mendel was more successful because he conducted his experiments with a systematic approach that involved using large sample sizes, keeping detailed records, and analyzing his results mathematically. Additionally, Mendel's choice of working with pea plants allowed him to control the breeding process and isolate specific traits more effectively than other scientists who studied more complex organisms.