born Aug. 8, 1861, Whitby, Yorkshire, Eng.
died Feb. 8, 1926, London
British biologist.
In 1900, while studying inheritance of traits, he was drawn to the research of Reginald Crundall Punnett , he published the results of a series of breeding experiments that not only extended Mendel's principles to animals but also showed that, contrary to Mendel, certain features were consistently inherited together, a phenomenon that came to be termed linkage (see linkage group ). In 1908 he became Britain's first professor of genetics, and in 1909 he introduced the term genetics . He opposed Thomas Hunt Morgan 's theory of chromosome s. {{link=Bateson, Gregory">Gregory Bateson was his son. See also Carl Erich Correns ; Hugo de Vries ; Erich Tschermak von Seysenegg .
William Bateson, drawing by Sir William Rothenstein, 1917; in the National Portrait Gallery, London
By courtesy of the National Portrait Gallery, London