Gregor Mendel was this sassy monk who lived Austria from 1822 to 1884.

As a monk, Greg had a luxury that most people these days have in short supply: free time. Not just some free time. I’m talking about a million pounds of free time. Science is really lucky that Gregorious chose gardening as his time-consuming hobby. If it had been underwater basket weaving or playing the harmonica, it would have altered the course of science history forever.

He didn’t just casually garden. He grew thousands of pea plants, bred them, and took notes of every feature. It sounds indescribably boring, which means he was either a masochist, or the guy just really, really liked gardening.

It takes some serious focus and determination to tend to thousands of plants and keep track of every mind-numbing detail like he did. An anti-science time machine terrorist could easily exploit his patience and perseverance to keep him from discovering the fundamentals of genetics.

Greggy is pretty lucky that he chose pea plants and not, oh I don’t know, ducks. Because pea plants have distinct, all-or-nothing characteristics for him to catalog, unlike ducks which have characteristics that are slightly harder to quantify.

What saddens me about the Gregmeister is that, like many historical scientists, his work wasn’t discovered and celebrated until after his death. But Gregorino, we love you. That’s why we call you the Father of Modern Genetics. And to show my continued appreciation, I got you a sweatshirt: