Bateson, William (1861–1926)

English geneticist. Bateson was one of the founders of the science of genetics (a term he introduced), and a leading proponent of Austrian biologist Gregor Mendel's work on heredity. Bateson also made contributions to embryology and to the theory of evolution.

Bateson was born in Whitby, Yorkshire, and educated at Cambridge, where in 1908 he became the first professor of genetics. He was director of the John Innes Horticultural Institution in Surrey 1910–26.

Doing embryological research in the USA in the 1880s, Bateson discovered evidence that chordates had evolved from echinoderms – a theory now widely accepted. He spent the next years investigating the fauna of the salt lakes of Europe, central Asia, and Egypt. In his book Material for the Study for Variation 1894, he put forward his theory of discontinuity to explain the long process of evolution. According to this theory, species do not develop in a predictable sequence of very gradual changes but instead evolve in a series of discontinuous jumps. Mendel's work, which he translated and championed, provided him with supportive evidence.

Bateson also carried out breeding experiments, described in Mendel's Principles of Heredity 1908. He showed that certain traits are consistently inherited together; this phenomenon (called linkage) is now known to result from genes being situated close together on the same chromosome.