This is Gregor Mendel. He was a monk who lived in Austria.

This is Mendel’s garden.

Mendel grew peas. Many peas.

He liked peas a lot. Here are some of his jars of peas.

He knew peas reproduced sexually (with and egg and pollen), and he began to control what peas crossed with other peas.

“Funny,” he thought. “Some of my peas are tall. Some are short.”

“If I cross a tall pea with a short pea, I get only tall peas.”

Mendel, a friend, and his tall peas.

“But when I take two tall pea children from that cross and mix them, I get some tall and some short. Hmmm….”

Mendel Started Adding.

He started counting all of the short peas he got, and all of the tall peas. He seems very puzzled in this photo.

Gregor Mendel is called “The father of modern genetics” because of his work breeding and analyzing peas in the 1800’s. He looked carefully at his numbers, and thought hard about: PROBABILITY- the chance something will happen. Expressed in percentage or fraction or ratio. Ex. 25% or 1/4 or 1:3