William Bateson | Biography

William Bateson was born in Whitby, Yorkshire, the son of a classical scholar. In 1883, he earned his bachelor of arts degree in natural science from Saint John's College, University of Cambridge. Although he had minimal training in physics, chemistry, and mathematics, throughout his career Bateson consistently surprised doubters with his outstanding abilities. He was a firm evolutionist and believed that the forms on earth were descendants of a small number of ancestors. He made significant contributions to the science of genetics.

By 1894, Charles Darwin's concept of continuous change had gained wide acceptance as an evolutionary theory. Darwin asserted that changes in species occur gradually, over a long period of time. Bateson, however, put forward the idea of discontinuous or abrupt change to explain the long process of evolution. According to Bateson, species do not develop gradually, but rather through abrupt jumps every once in a while. This controversial view was unacceptable to traditional biometric scientists, who were convinced that there was no break in evolutionary process.

Bateson was not deterred. Using sweet peas and poultry, he began experiments in hybridization, searching for answers to questions about the laws of heredity, such as: how are traits distributed among offspring and are there predictable patterns"

He was already convinced that traits were separate units, not products of blending. When Gregor Mendel's work was rediscovered in 1900, Bateson had the support he needed. With Reginald Crundall Punnett, Bateson reinterpreted Mendel's experiments. They proved that Mendelian principles held for animals as well as plants--characteristics of inheritance were carried as individual "packets" of information, or genes, and these packets were passed on to offspring. Bateson's first major achievement was bringing Mendel's work to the attention of the world. It was no easy task, for most people had already accepted the "blending theories." Bateson translated Mendel's theories from German and promoted them with energy and enthusiasm. It soon became evident that a new science was emerging. Bateson named it genetics.

As the scientific community began accepting Mendelian genetics, Bateson and his partners continued to experiment. They were shocked to discover an apparent contradiction to Mendel's theories: some traits are consistently inherited together in what later became known as gene linkage.

Bateson did not realize that certain traits were linked because they were found on the same chromosome. Instead, Bateson tried to explain his observations by proposing his own vibration theory based on the physics of force and motion. This theory quickly faded as more evidence pointed to chromosomes as the only acceptable explanation for gene linkage.