Gregor Mendel, an Austrian monk, conducted experiments in the 1850s at the University of Vienna's garden to study plant hybridization and inheritance. He found that when he cross-pollinated true-breeding pea plants with different traits, like plant height or seed color, the offspring displayed one of the parental traits, not a blend or mixture, and these traits were passed unchanged to future generations in predictable ratios. His experiments formed the foundation of classical genetics and heredity.