> Anthropologists and Ethnographers Born 9 May, 1904. Grantchester, Cambridgeshire, England; son of William Bateson (b. 8 Aug. 1861) and Caroline Beatrice Bateson (b. 1870)
1913–17. Attends preparatory school at Warden House, Deal, Kent
1917–21. Attends public school at Charterhouse, Godalming, Surrey
1922–26. Cambridge University: honors degree in natural science and anthropology; M.A. in anthropology (1930)
1926. Death of William Bateson (father)
1927–30. Anthropological fieldwork among the Baining and Sulka of New Britain and among the Iatmul of New Guinea, where he first meets Margaret Mead
1931- 37. Research Fellow, St John’s College, Cambridge. (Naven is published in 1936)
1936. Marries Margaret Mead (b. 16 Dec. 1901) on 13 March 1936
1936–8. Anthropological fieldwork with Margaret Mead in Bali
8 Dec. 1939. birth of daughter, Mary Catherine Bateson
1940–42. Works for the Committee for National Morale; 1942–43 film analyst, Museum of Modern Art, New York
1943–45. Staff planner and regional specialist for Southeast Asia, for the U.S. Office of Strategic Services (OSS overseas in Ceylon, India, Burma, China)
1946–48. Visiting Professor in Anthropology, New School for Social Research (New York City) and Harvard University; attends first Macy conferences, along with Margaret Mead, on feedback mechanisms and circular causal systems in biological and social sciences
1948–49. Research Associate with Jurgen Ruesch at the Langley Porter Clinic, University of California, San Francisco
1949–63. Ethnologist, Veterans Administration Hospital, Palo Alto, California
1950. Divorces Margaret Mead and marries Elizabeth Sumner
1951. Birth of son, John Bateson. (publication of Communication: The Social Matrix of Society)
1954–59. Director, research project on schizophrenic communication under a grant from the Josiah Macy, Jr. Foundation
1957. Divorces Elizabeth Sumner
1961. Marries Lois Cammack
1963–64. Associate Director, Communications Institute, St Thomas, Virgin Islands; works with John Lilly on dolphin communication
1965–72. Associate Director, Oceanic Institute, Waimanalo, Hawaii, and Visiting Professor, University of Hawaii; begins formal work on ecosystems as an extension of his notion of ‘ecology of mind’
13 April 1969. Birth of daughter, Nora Bateson
1972–78. Visiting Senior Lecturer, Department of Anthropology, University of California, Santa Cruz. (1972 publication of Steps to an Ecology of Mind).
1976. Appointed to the Board of Regents of the University of California
1978–80. Scholar-in-Residence, Esalen Institute, (1979. Publication of Mind and Nature: A Necessary Unity). Works on a manuscript entitled ‘Where Angels Fear to Tread’
4 July 1980. Dies. Zen Center San Francisco, California.
1987. Bateson and M.C. Bateson publish (posthumously) Where Angels Fear to Tread: Towards an Epistemology of the Sacred. New York: Macmillan.