Born in Edinburgh and educated in the High School there. Came to London determined to pursue natural history in which he had a strong interest and joined the staff of the British Museum in December 1835. From 1842 –1850 he had charge of the Coleoptera Collections. Waterhouse et.al. (1906) p.553, state that in 1846 ‘he arranged the Cetoniadae and, in 1847, the Hydrocanthari; commencing the Buprestidae the same year, he completed them in 1848; then proceeded to the Cleridae, completed in 1849’. In 1851-52 he was engaged upon the Longicornia which he completed in 1855. He retired from the Museum with mental problems in 1863 and was granted a pension. His obituary in EMM., 15, 1879, pp.210-211, records that even though he was confined to several asylums in Scotland he still continued to write. During his time at the Museum White published many papers on a range of subjects including some twenty or so on Coleoptera, most describing new species, particularly Cerambycidae, and several catalogues. The types of nearly all the specimens he described are in the NHM. There is a portrait in N.L. Evenhuis, The Life and Work of Francis Walker 1809-1874, in Fly Times (Supplement 2), 27 September 2018, 1-100. FESL 1839-56. (MD 12/04, 12/20)