Science
The monk who founded genetics and was ignored for 35 years
Between 1856 and 1863, Gregor Mendel bred roughly 28,000 pea plants in his monastery garden, tracking how traits like flower color and seed shape passed between generations. His 1866 paper laid out the mathematical rules of inheritance we now call dominant and recessive genes, but almost no one noticed. It sat uncited until 1900, when three separate botanists rediscovered his work and genetics became a field.