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. Bateson was a firm evolutionist, purporting that all life forms on earth were descendants of a small number of ancestors. Bateson 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, periodic jumps. This controversial view was unacceptable to...