Once upon a time (1860's), in an Austrian monastery, there lived a monk named Mendel, Gregor Mendel. Monks had a lot of time on there hands and Mendel spent his time crossing pea plants. As he did this over & over & over & over & over again, he noticed some patterns to the inheritance of traits from one set of pea plants to the next. By carefully analyzing his pea plant numbers (he was really good at mathematics), he discovered three laws of inheritance.

Mendel's Laws are as follows:

1. the Law of Dominance 
2. the Law of Segregation 
3. the Law of Independent Assortment

Now, notice in that very brief description of his work that the words "chromosomes" or "genes" are nowhere to be found.  That is because the role of these things in relation to inheritance & heredity had not been discovered yet. What makes Mendel's contributions so impressive is that he described the basic patterns of inheritance before the mechanism for inheritance (namely genes) was even discovered.

Hail to the "Father of Genetics" !

(from Mr. Krousen http://www.hobart.k12.in.us/jkousen/Biology/mendel.htm)