Gregor Mendel

Gregor Mendel was a scientist who was very interested in how plants made babies. He lived a long time ago, in a time where people didn't know much about genetics (which is like the recipe for how you look). But Gregor wanted to figure it out!

So, he started studying peas. He looked at all the different kinds of peas and how they looked when they grew up. Some were tall, some were short, some had yellow seeds, and some had green seeds. He wanted to understand why they looked different.

To find out, Gregor spent a lot of time growing different kinds of peas together and watched how they made babies. He found that some traits, like height and the color of the seeds, showed up a lot in the new babies. And sometimes, other traits seemed to disappear completely.

Gregor thought that maybe there were little things inside the peas that made these traits. He called them "factors" (which are now called genes). He realized that the factors were passed down from the parent plants to their babies, just like you get your blue or brown eyes from your parents.

Thanks to Gregor's discoveries, scientists now know a lot more about genetics and how traits are inherited. And we still study peas today because they are a great way to understand how genes work!