Gregor Johann Mendel (1822 – 1884) the priest and botanist whose work laid the foundation of the study of genetics.

Hulton Archive/Getty Images/ Max Posner/NPR

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Hulton Archive/Getty Images/ Max Posner/NPR

Gregor Johann Mendel (1822 – 1884) the priest and botanist whose work laid the foundation of the study of genetics.

Hulton Archive/Getty Images/ Max Posner/NPR

When the man known as “father of genetics” turns 200, how do you celebrate?

By digging up his body and sequencing his DNA, of course.

That’s what a team of scientists in the Czech Republic did this year to celebrate Gregor Mendel, a scientist and friar whose experiments in the mid-1800s laid the groundwork for modern genetics.

Mendel lived and worked in Brno, the second-largest city in the Czech Republic. With 2022 marking the bicentennial of Mendel’s birth, local researchers there – where Mendel remains something of a hometown hero – searched for ways to remember the man and honor the moment. Possibilities…