<Tr> <Th> Awards </Th> <Td> Royal Medal (1920) </Td> </Tr> <Tr> <Td_colspan="2"> Scientific career </Td> </Tr> <Tr> <Th> Fields </Th> <Td> genetics </Td> </Tr> <P> William Bateson (8 August 1861--8 February 1926) was an English biologist who 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 following their rediscovery in 1900 by Hugo de Vries and Carl Correns . His 1894 book Materials for the Study of Variation was one of the earliest formulations of the new approach to genetics . </P>

Who was the first western scientist to study heredity