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John A.V. Bates was born on 24 August 1918. He was educated at Pembroke College, Cambridge and went on to clinical training at University College Hospital, London. During the Second World War he worked on visual tracking in gunnery and control design in tanks under the auspices of the Ministry of Supply. In 1946 he joined the External Scientific Staff of the Medical Research Council based at the Neurological Research Unit at the National Hospital for Nervous Diseases, London, where he worked until retirement in 1978. Bates also served as Honorary Consultant Physician to the Department of Applied Electrophysiology at the Hospital.
Bates was a leader in the field of neurophysiology. At the end of the Second World War, using home-made equipment from surplus electronic parts, Bates developed specialised equipment for brain stimulation and recording. He studied the human electroencephalogram (EEG) in research into voluntary movement, a term he may have coined. He went on to study the neurological effects of hemispherectomy and later collaborated with Irving Cooper and Purdon Martin on research into Parkinson's Disease, with work on human postural and balance mechanisms.
Bates founded the Ratio Club, a small informal dining club of young physiologists, mathematicians and engineers who met to discuss issues in cybernetics. The idea of the club arose from a Society of Experimental Biology Symposium on Animal Behaviour held in Cambridge, July 1949. The initial membership was W.R. Ashby, H. Barlow, G.D. Dawson, T. Gold, W.E. Hick, D.M. MacKay, T. McLardy, P.A. Merton, J.W.S. Pringle, H. Shipton, D.A. Sholl, A.M. Uttley, W.G. Walter and J. Westcott. A.M. Turing joined after the first meeting and other other members included I.J. Good, P.A. Woodward and W.H.A. Rushton. The Club continued in being until 1958. Bates acted as Secretary and retained many of its historical records.
Bates was a member of the Physiological Society from 1949, and a member of the Electroencephalography Society (now the British Society for Clinical Neurophysiology), serving as President 1976-1978, and the Association of British Neurologists. He died on 16 July 1993.