Bateson, William

Bateson, William (1861-1926) British geneticist, who worked at Cambridge University. In 1900 he translated and championed the rediscovered work of Mendel and went on to study inheritance in chickens. He found that some traits are controlled by more than one gene. He also coined the term genetics . 

William Bateson first described in 1895. These mutations do not arrest development but transform one part of the body into another. Antennapedia mutations, for example, transform antennae into legs, which gives rise to an insect with two legs sprouting from its head, whereas bithorax mutations transform the third thorax into a second one, giving the insect an extra pair of wings. 

Olby, R. (1989). Scientists and bureaucrats in the establishment of the John Innes Horticultural Institution under William Bateson. Annals of Science 46 497-510. 

J.B.F. (1927). Obituary notices of Fellows deceased William Bateson, 1861-1926. Proceedings of the Royal Society of London, Series B 101 i-v. 

Richmond, M. L. (2001). Women in the early history of genetics William Bateson and the Newnham College Mendelians, 1900-1910. Isis 92 55-90. 

Muriel joined William Bateson s lab group in 1903, where she investigated the inheritance of flower color in Antirrhinum. She quickly devised a factorial analysis that could account for variation in the color patterns, and then switched her attentions to her main interest, the biochemical basis for Mendelian genetics. In the preface to The Anthocyanin Pigments of Plants, Muriel wrote, For we have now, on the one hand, satisfactory... 

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