In the summer of 1878, Abbot Gregor Mendel was visited in his monastery by the horticulturalist C.W. Eichling, representing a French seed company. The 22-year old Eichling was touring Central Europe, and had been urged to visit Mendel’s collection of pea plants at his monastery in the town of Brno in what is now called the Czech Republic. At the age of 56, Mendel had been nearly five years removed from his scientific work with pea plants, having been so preoccupied with the daily operations of a large monastery that he could only spend rare free hours in his garden.

On Eichling’s visit, Mendel showed him the grounds and his beehives, and of course his beds of pea plants. The plants, Mendel admitted, had been crafted to suit the monastery’s food needs. The beds featured 25 varieties, many of them a “hybrid” — the offspring of two different types of peas — consisting of wild-grown plants mixed with the local sugar-pod types. Eichling wondered how this unassuming monk could really claim to possess custom-made plants. Mendel responded, “It is just a little trick, but there is a long story connected with it which it would take too long to tell.” The Abbott then continued the tour of his monastery, ignoring Eichling’s requests for the rest of the story. When Eichling left, he asked a customer why Mendel had been so reluctant to reveal his account, and was told that Mendel was “one of the best clerics,” but “not a soul believed his experiments were anything more than the maundering of a charming putterer.” About 20 years later, this “charming putterer” would be hailed for developing two ideas that we now accept as fundamental laws of inheritance.

Explore the full story of Gregor Mendel and his work on inheritance.