Question: whos your favourite scientist

Juan Ortiz answered on 17 Jun 2016:

My favourite scientist is Mendel. He discovered how features are transmitted from parents to sons explaining why we resemble our parents. For that he studied pea plants of different sizes and colours and observed that some of the features were dominant and some others are recessive. What does it mean? Let’s say that you inherit a gene from your mother that determines blue eyes and another gene from your father that determines brown eyes. Your eyes would be brown because the brown-colour-eyes gene is dominant whereas the blue one is recessive. Only if you have two blue-eyes genes you will have blue eyes. The method to study how this genetic information was transmitted from parents to sons was discovered my Mendel and before anyone knew what genes or DNA are. No one could understand his discoveries because he was so far beyond the knowledge of that age.

To do his experiments he had to go to a monastery because he didn’t have any money to study and he had to plant a lot of pea plants so he had to eat peas for years before he could understand how the features are passed on from parents to sons.

He is the father of genetics and that’s why he is my favourite scientist.