What was the name of the town where Mendel was born?

Gregor Mendel was born in Heinzendorf, historically known as Heinzendorf bei Odrau.

He was born on 20 July 1822 into a German-speaking family in the Silesian part of the Austrian Empire. The settlement is now called Hynčice and lies within the municipality of Vražné in the Czech Republic. “Heinzendorf” is therefore the historical name used in biographies of Mendel, while Hynčice is the modern geographic name.

Mendel grew up in a farming family and spent part of his childhood working as a gardener and studying beekeeping. His early rural experience preceded his later scientific work with cultivated plants at St. Thomas’s Abbey in Brno, where he became an Augustinian friar and eventually an abbot.

A common mix-up is Brno: Mendel lived, worked, and conducted his celebrated experiments there, but Brno was not his birthplace. Olomouc was also important in his education, while Vienna was where he studied science. The town associated with his birth is Heinzendorf.