William Bateson brought the work of Mendel (and much more) to the attention of the English-speaking world. He commanded the biological sciences in the decades after Darwin's death in 1882. To understand these years we must first understand Bateson. Through examination of the life of a major contributor to the turn-of-the-nineteenth-century revolution in biology, the authors reconcile the genocentrism of George Williams and Richard Dawkins with the hierarchical thinking of Richard Goldschmidt and Stephen Jay Gould. Aided by Rebecca Saunders, Bateson invented much of the basic terminology of modern genetics and, when addressing Darwin's great problem – the origin of species, introduced the mysterious term "the residue".
While the first edition of this work (2008) related "residue" to relative concentrations of bases in DNA, the second edition reveals this as reflecting fundamental differences in short strings of bases. Thus, the book has come to represent not only Bateson's science and life, but also a revised history of the biosciences that is likely to be increasingly visited, both by scientists and by those who wish to fully understand contemporary debates on racial, eugenic and gender aspects of genetics. In a nutshell, the book describes what we, in modern terms, would call a "colossal intelligence failure". Mendel handed it to us "on a plate" in 1865 when Bateson was only 4. It took 35 years to "join the dots" with Bateson a primary joiner. Shrugged off by many 20th-century scientists as a freak "blip" in what was really an orderly advance, the Mendel episode was but one of a succession of such "blips". Thus, a multiplicity of post-Mendelian "Mendels" emerge as the story of Bateson's life unfolds.
Abbreviations
Prologue
Part I. Genesis of a Geneticist
1. A Cambridge Childhood (1861-1882
2. From Virginia to the Aral Sea (1883-1889)
3. Galton
4. Variation (1890-1894)
5. Romanes
6. Reorientation and Controversy (1895-1899)
7. What Life May Be
Part II. Mendelism
8. Rediscovery (1900-1901)
9. Mendel's Bulldog (1902-1906)
10. Bateson's Bulldog
11. On Course (1907-1908)
12. Darwin Centenary (1909)
13. Chromosomes
Part III. The Innes Years
14. Passages (1910-1914)
15. Eugenics
16. War (1915-1919)
17. My Respectful Homage (1920-1922)
18. Limits Undetermined (1923-1926)
Part IV. Politics
19. Butler
20. Pilgrimages
21. Kammerer
22. Science and Chauvinism
23. Degrees for Women
Part V. Eclipse
24. Bashing
25. Epilogue
Part VI. Further Rediscovery
26. The Third Base
27. Mendel Basics
28. Romanes, Bateson, and Darwin's "Weak Point"
29. Bateson's Residue: Oligonucleotide Disharmony
Publications of William Bateson
References and Notes
Acknowledgements
Index
Alan Cock (1926–2005) was a son-in-law of a colleague of Tschermak, one of the botanist "rediscoverers" of Mendel. His undergraduate studies in Zoology at Cambridge led to work with Michael Pease (1947-57) at the Agricultural Research Council Poultry Genetics Unit. Since Pease had himself assisted Punnett, who was Bateson's main assistant, then Alan can be seen as Bateson's "scientific great-grandson". After doctoral work in Genetics (Edinburgh 1962), he became a lecturer in Zoology at the University of Southampton. In the early, pre-history, phase of his career, his work with Morten Simonsen provided a fundamental understanding of the graft-versus-host reaction (Immunology 1958 1, 103-110). In the 1960s he and Stephen Jay Gould were leaders in studies of animal growth and form (allometry; Q. Rev. Biol. 1966 41, 131-190). In the 1970s he repatriated, curated and catalogued the papers of William Bateson, and wrote several important papers on, and initiated a definitive biography of, Bateson (later coauthored with Forsdyke). He corresponded and/or collaborated with many important mid-late-20th century figures.
Donald Forsdyke was born in London, UK (1938), and has degrees in Medicine (St. Mary's Hospital Medical School) and in Biochemistry (PhD, Cambridge University). He has engaged in research and teaching at the Department of Biochemistry, Queen's University, Kingston, Canada, since 1968. His research includes the concept and mechanism of positive selection of lymphocyte repertoires, discovery of the lectin pathway of complement activation, identification of lymphocyte activation genes, bioinformatic analyses of DNA sequences relating to introns and speciation, and biohistory with special reference to evolutionary biology and the roles of George Romanes, William Bateson and Samuel Butler. His interest in history derives from a belief that understanding how science has progressed in the past will aid its progress in the future.
Reviews of the first edition:
"This work includes key events in Bateson's career and is strengthened by discussion of the rediscovery of Mendelian principles by early-20th-century geneticists. [...] this interesting work will appeal to biologists and historians of science. Summing Up: Recommended. Upper-division undergraduate through professional collections."
– J. S. Schwartz, Choice, Vol. 46(7), March, 2009
"The presnt book is particularly welcome in helping to fill a significant gap in the history of genetics [...]. Donald Forsdyke has now extended and completed the book, a major undertaking for which both geneticists and historians should be grateful."
– Peter S. Harper, Human Genetics, Vol. 125, 2009
"This volume will be of enormous benefit to historians of science who like to follow how ideas are born or die and why participants of different sides of each controversy held such rigid views of their own work and saw little merit in their competitor's research. [...] I recommend reading all 745 pages of this biography. It is worth the effort [...]."
– Elof Axel Carlson, The Quarterly Review of Biology, Vol. 84, December, 2009