Gregor Mendel conducted experiments with pea plants in the 1860s to discover the principles of heredity. Through his experiments with monohybrid and dihybrid crosses, Mendel deduced two laws of inheritance: 1) The Law of Segregation states that alleles segregate and are passed to gametes independently, resulting in a 1:2:1 genotypic ratio. 2) The Law of Independent Assortment states that different genes assort independently, resulting in a 9:3:3:1 phenotypic ratio for dihybrid crosses. Mendel's laws demonstrated that heredity follows predictable statistical patterns and established the foundations of classical genetics.