AN INAUGURAL LECTURE DELIVERED
23 OCTOBER 1908
by
W. BATESON, M.A., F.R.S.
PROFESSOR OF BIOLOGY IN THE UNIVERSITY OF CAMBRIDGE
Cambridge:
at the University Press
1912
First Edition 1908
Reprinted 1912
PREFATORY NOTE
The Professorship of Biology was founded in 1908 for a period of five years partly by the generosity of an anonymous benefactor, and partly by the University of Cambridge. The object of the endowment was the promotion of inquiries into the physiology of Heredity and Variation, a study now spoken of as Genetics.
It is now recognized that the progress of such inquiries will chiefly be accomplished by the application of experimental methods, especially those which Mendel's discovery has suggested. The purpose of this inaugural lecture is to describe the outlook over this field of research in a manner intelligible to students of other parts of knowledge.
W. B.