Mendel, often referred to as the father of genetics, was an Austrian monk named Gregor Mendel. He conducted groundbreaking experiments in the mid-19th century using pea plants to study inheritance patterns. His work revealed how traits are passed from one generation to the next, laying the foundation for the field of genetics. Mendel's experiments led to the formulation of key principles, such as the laws of segregation and independent assortment. These principles explain how alleles, the different forms of a gene, combine and separate during reproduction. His findings were largely unrecognized during his lifetime but later became crucial to the understanding of DNA and heredity.