The father of genetics is Gregor Mendel. Mendel was an Austrian biologist and Augustinian monk who conducted pioneering experiments on pea plants between 1856 and 1863. Through these experiments, he discovered the fundamental laws of inheritance, now known as Mendelian inheritance, which describe how traits are passed from parents to offspring via discrete units called genes. Mendel introduced key concepts such as dominant and recessive traits and formulated the laws of segregation and independent assortment. Although his work was not recognized during his lifetime, it was rediscovered around 1900, leading to the birth of modern genetics. For these contributions, Mendel is widely regarded as the founder or "father of genetics"