Mendel - The Father of Genetics

One of the main difficulties faced when considering an evolutionary paradigm during the time of Lamark and others was a lack of knowledge concerning genetics and the processes of natural selection. Though in many cases Lamark has been called the father of an evolutionary paradigm, actual proof as pertaining to genetics and the process of natural selection did not occur until a century later when the significance of such material was realized.

Gregor Mendel is considered to be the father of genetics, though his work was relatively unappreciated until the early 1900's. Mendel was an Austrian Monk who studied heredity and traits using simple pea plants. By tracing specific traits of a plant, such as pod shape and color, Mendel was able to devise several laws of heredity which applied to the passage of traits from one member of a species to another member of the same species. Mendel's laws were as follows, the first law states that the sex cell of a plant may contain factors (alleles) for different traits (the basis for recessive and dominant gene composition), but not both factors for those traits. The second law stated that characteristics are inherited independently from another. The third theory states that each inherited characteristic is determined by two hereditary factors (known more recently as genes), one from each parent, which decides whether a gene is dominant or recessive (in other words if the gene is recessive, it will still be present but will not show up.