The Gregor Johann Mendel Honorary Medal for Merit in the Biological Sciences
The Gregor Johann Mendel Honorary Medal
for Merit in the Biological Sciences
awarded by the Czech Academy of Sciences
This honour was established by the Czechoslovak Academy of Sciences on September 2, 1965 as an Honorary Plaquette for outstanding contributions in the basic fields of biological and agricultural sciences. Since the second half of the year 1995, it has been awarded by the Czech Academy of Sciences as an Honorary Medal.
Gregor Johann Mendel (1822–1884) was a Moravian priest, a natural scientist of a German nationality, and the founder of the discipline of genetics. He worked the conclusions of his experiments with cross-breeding into a law which evidenced the nature of genetic factors and the statistical regularity of their transmission from generation to generation. Mendel's laws are the foundation of the modern discipline of genetics which has quickly grown into one of the most significant branches of biology. G. J. Mendel presented and published his results in a magazine of the Brno Association of Natural Science. His findings, later rediscovered, became the foundation and starting point for classic genetics and modern breeding. Mendel's experiments were repeated many times, verified and expanded upon. The particular section of the discipline of genetics has been named Mendelism after him.
The G. J. Mendel medal was designed by academic painter, graphic artist and medallist Lumír Šindelář (1925–2010), a student of Prof. J. Želibský, Prof. O. Nejedlý, Prof. M. Holý and Prof. K. Minář.