Gregor Mendel began his studies at the University of Vienna in 1851. The Augustinian abbot Cyril František Napp sponsored Mendel’s move to Vienna after Mendel had struggled financially and had failed part of an examination for secondary-school teaching certification.
At Vienna, Mendel received advanced training that shaped his later scientific work. He studied experimental physics under Christian Doppler, whose name is associated with the Doppler effect, and also studied plant anatomy, physiology, morphology, and classification. This broader scientific education helped him combine careful measurement with biological experimentation.
Mendel returned to St. Thomas’s Abbey in Brno in 1853 and resumed teaching. A common mix-up is to confuse 1851 with 1850: 1850 was the year of his unsuccessful teaching examination, while 1851 marked the beginning of his university studies in Vienna. His later pea experiments, conducted mainly between 1856 and 1863, became the foundation of modern genetics.