Those who have studied genetics at school or university would have heard of Gregor Mendel and his experiments on heredity. Mendel was a monk and abbot based at St Thomas's Abbey in the city of Brno, in what is now the Czech Republic but in his day was part of the Austrian Empire. Mendel is considered the founder of modern genetics due to his detailed experiments on pea plants which he conducted between 1856 and 1863. He studied 7 traits or characteristics of pea plants (things that we would now call phenotypes) and through meticulous breeding experiments established the basic rules of heredity.