Understanding genetics

As you likely learned somewhere along the way, Gregor Mendel wanted to better understand the world around him. So using simple gardening tools, he took somewhere around 28,000 samples of peas and cross bred them. 

He documented his findings, and was the first to understand genetic inheritance. Pea color, shape, size, and so on, were studied and it became a model for genetics. 

That understanding has held up to generations of scrutiny, more sophisticated testing, and has allowed us to really appreciate this evolutionary cycle. And keep in mind he was an Augustinian friar. Which meant that he was religious person who believed in science (though understandably he thought there was a hand of god playing a part in it). 

Researches continue to be fascinated by what he accomplished, and are working toward closing any remaining items in the work that still need to be proved. 

And this group thinks they have completed that proof. It's really cool. 

But the best part of all of it is that one of them showed tremendous humility. A hallmark of great scientists. He said. 

"The most important and beautiful part of this research is the collaboration." 

We can learn a lot from that. 

https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-025-01269-8