Letters: Sir Patrick Bateson obituary

Steven Rose writes: I first met Pat Bateson in the late 60s, as we shared a mutual interest in the brain mechanisms involved in learning and memory. We became firm friends, and it was the start of a decade-long, and I believe unique, collaboration between Pat, a behavioural biologist, Gabriel Horn, an anatomist, and me as a biochemist. Pat's favoured model was the day-old chick, primed to learn to recognise its mother - imprinting. Together, we identified the brain regions required for such learning to take place, and the cellular and molecular mechanisms that encoded the memory.

Years later, we made a memorable trip to the Galipagos (on, appropriately, a boat called Beagle), with Pat and his daughter Melissa, a biologist, impressing us with their capacity to identify birds by the merest flicker of feathers as they flew past.