Obituary notices of fellows deceased

William Bateson died on February 8th, 1926, and English science lost in him one of her really great men. He was born at Whitby in 1861, the son of the Rev. W. H. Bateson, D. D., Master of St. John’s College, Cambridge. He was educated at Rugby and St. John’s College, and was attached to the study of Zoology. He was elected Balfour Student in 1887, and his early research work on Balanoglossus marked him as one of the coming men in biological science. His early University life coincided with the general settling down of educated opinion in favour of the Darwinian proofs of the validity of evolution as affording the key to the mystery of the origin of species. But with the general acceptance of that doctrine much was taken for granted, and all the foundations for the new belief were apt to be accepted as sound beyond the need of further examination. Bateson, however, was one of the few who were not content with the flow of current opinion, nor with the methods of investigation which were being pursued, more especially in this country. He had the, to many minds, disconcerting gift of facing and concentrating on the difficulties that were too often slurred over by his contemporaries, and he set himself to probe into the fundamental assumptions that lay at the root of the theory of evolution as then understood. Chief amongst these fundamental assumptions was the notion that the basis of evolutionary change in living forms lay in the gradual summation of almost imperceptibly small variations, and that, in fact, specific change was attributable to selection and accumulation of these small variations as the result of environmental conditions.