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50 free Gregor Mendel trivia questions with answers — science & nature quiz, new questions added Aug 2026.
This Gregor Mendel trivia quiz covers the Augustinian friar whose pea plants founded genetics, decades before anyone noticed. The easy questions handle the peas, the 3-to-1 ratio, dominant and recessive, the abbey and the two laws. From there it moves through the life: the struggling farm, the sister who gave up her dowry, the teaching exams he kept failing, the year under Christian Doppler in Vienna, and the trip to London that may have shaped his final experiments. The harder end covers the bishop who giggled at pea genealogies, the size of the garden, the number of plants, the paper nobody cited, the botanist who did not understand it, the three men who rediscovered it in 1900, the hawkweed that refused to cooperate, the aggressive bees, the mouse myth, the composer at his funeral, the papers his successor burned, and the statistician who said the data were too good to be true. Every answer was checked against Mendel's encyclopaedia entry before publishing and the supporting sentence is stored with each question. Our biology and famous scientists quizzes are the natural next stop.
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Q 01Mendel was abbot of St Thomas' Abbey in which city, then in Moravia?
Brno
The abbey's two-hectare garden was where the pea experiments took place.
Q 02Mendel was born in 1822 in which region of the Austrian Empire, now part of the Czech Republic?
Silesia
His birthplace, Heinzendorf, is now the village of Hyncice, and the farmhouse is a museum.
Q 03Mendel was born Johann. He took the name Gregor on joining which religious order?
The Augustinians
He admitted that monastic life spared him 'perpetual anxiety about a means of livelihood'.
Q 04Mendel's pea experiments began in 1856 and ran until which year?
1863
In that time he cultivated and tested some 28,000 plants.
Q 05How many characteristics of the pea plant did Mendel study?
Seven
They covered plant height, pod shape and colour, seed shape and colour, and flower position and colour.
Q 06When Mendel crossed true-breeding peas of two seed colours, what did the first-generation offspring show?
Only the dominant colour
All the seeds were yellow; green reappeared only in the next generation, one in four.
Q 07In the second generation, green peas reappeared in what ratio to yellow?
1 to 3
The famous 3:1 ratio underlies his law of segregation.
Q 08Mendel coined the term 'recessive' and which partner term?
Dominant
In his example yellow was the dominant seed colour and green the recessive.
Q 09In which year did Mendel publish his paper on plant hybridization?
1866
It was cited only about three times in the next thirty-five years.
Q 10In which year were Mendel's laws finally rediscovered?
1900
Three researchers from three countries published within two months of each other.
Q 11Which Dutch botanist was among the rediscoverers of Mendel's work in 1900?
Hugo de Vries
He probably did not understand his own results until he read Mendel, and later lost interest in Mendelism.
Q 12As a boy on the family farm, Mendel worked as a gardener and studied what?
Beekeeping
He kept bees at the monastery for the rest of his life.
Q 13Struggling to pay for his studies, Mendel was helped by his younger sister Theresia, who gave him what?
Her dowry
He later helped support her three sons, two of whom became doctors.
Q 21Mendel died in Brno in 1884 of what?
Chronic nephritis
He was 61.
Q 22Which Czech composer played the organ at Mendel's funeral?
Leos Janacek
Janacek was then organist and choirmaster in Brno.
Q 23What did the abbot who succeeded Mendel do with his papers?
Burned them
The aim was to end the disputes over taxation once and for all.
Q 24Mendel's genome, sequenced after his 2021 exhumation, showed a predisposition to what?
Q 14Mendel said the monastic life spared him 'perpetual anxiety about a means of' what?
Livelihood
Becoming a monk let the son of a struggling farmer get an education for free.
Q 15Mendel twice failed which section of the exam to become a certified high-school teacher?
The oral
He failed in 1850 and again in 1856, and taught as a substitute instead.
Q 16Which abbot sponsored Mendel's studies at the University of Vienna in 1851?
Cyril Napp
Napp later warned him off the peas, reporting that the Bishop giggled at the idea.
Q 17Who was Mendel's physics professor at Vienna?
Christian Doppler
Mendel returned to the abbey in 1853 to teach, principally physics.
Q 18From 1840 to 1843 Mendel studied at the Philosophical Institute of which university?
Olomouc
Illness cost him a year there, as it had four months at his gymnasium in Troppau.
Q 19In summer 1862 Mendel joined a group tour to which two cities, visiting the International Exhibition?
Paris and London
The trip may have influenced the final stage of his hybridisation research.
Q 20After becoming abbot, Mendel's science largely ended because of a long government dispute over what?
Taxes on religious institutions
His successor burned his papers to draw a line under the row.
Heart problems
The exhumation for his 200th birthday also put his height at 168 cm.
Q 25Roughly how large was the monastery's experimental garden where Mendel grew his peas?
2 hectares
Aleksander Zawadzki helped with the experimental design.
Q 26According to Abbot Napp, how did the Bishop react on hearing of Mendel's detailed pea genealogies?
He giggled
Napp wrote to discourage the work; Mendel carried on regardless.
Q 27About how many plants did Mendel cultivate and test between 1856 and 1863?
28,000
Most were the common pea, Pisum sativum.
Q 28Which trait did Mendel focus on first?
Seed shape
Seeds were either angular or round.
Q 29Mendel's two generalisations were the Law of Segregation and the Law of what?
Independent Assortment
Together they became known as Mendel's Laws of Inheritance.
Q 30Mendel presented his paper 'Experiments on Plant Hybridization' at two 1865 meetings of which body?
Brno Natural History Society
It got a few kind mentions in local newspapers and was otherwise ignored.