Gregory Bateson was born on May 9, 1904
in Grantchester England. His father, William Bateson, was a pioneer in the
field of genetics; Bateson attended a charterhouse school in 1917 and then
transferred to St. Johns College-Cambridge
University where he studied Natural History. He graduated in 1925 at the
age of 21.
After a long trip, Bateson decided he wanted to study Anthropology. At that point, he returned to Cambridge University, where he studied with many other well known anthropologists. He served as a lecturer in linguistics under Radcliffe-Brown. He received his Masters Degree in 1930.
After getting his Masters Degree, Bateson went to New Guinea to study for two years. While there, he met his future wife, anthropologist Margaret Mead. He also finished Naven, a book about New Guinea's Iatmul people, which was published in 1936.
After his studies in New Guinea, he traveled around the United States teaching and lecturing on subjects in all fields at many different colleges. He enjoyed cybernetics, which he studied with John Von Neumann and Norbert Wiener. This new field was a way of expressing his long-standing interest in the process of communication within and between individuals.
In 1941, he worked as an analyst of German propaganda films at the Museum of Modern Art in New York. He then went on to work at the Office of Strategic Services, lecturing at Columbia University and later serving in China, Burma, Ceylon and India as a teacher. After the war he spent a great deal of time at Harvard University as a Visiting Professor.
After a short time at Harvard, Bateson went out to San Francisco for a
year to study communications. From 1963 to 1964 he was the Director of the
Communication Research Institute at St. Thomas, U.S. Virgin Islands, and then
from 1964 to 1972 he served as Director at the
Oceanic Institute in Hawaii.
During this period, he was studying porpoise communication, a still-debated
subject. He accomplished very little from his long study.
Bateson was not involved in just one department but many different areas of study. By the end of Bateson’s life, he had moved through zoology, psychology, anthropology and ethnology. Gregory Bateson died on July 4, 1980 in San Francisco at the age 76.
All of the photos have been graciously provided courtesy of Jeff Bloom. They were taken in 1975 at the Naropa Institute and at the Naropa "Workshop on Education". To email Jeff Bloom click here.
Additional information about Gregory Bateson can be found at the University of California, Santa Cruz (McHenry Library) Special Archives collection of Bateson's letters and work. It includes letters, photos and other papers as well as published materials.
References
Photo Courtesy of: Jeff Bloom, 75'
Written By: Anthropology Students at Minnesota State University, Mankato