William Bateson (Yorkshire, 8 August 1861 – 8 February 1926) was a British zoologist, a Fellow of St. John's College, Cambridge University. He was the first person to use the term genetics to describe the study of heredity, and the chief populariser of the ideas of Gregor Mendel, after their rediscovery in 1900 by Hugo de Vries and Carl Correns.