[1] He became acquainted with John Edward Gray, Keeper of Zoology at the British Museum.

At the age of eighteen, White obtained a post in the Museum in the Zoology Department.

[2] White specialised in insects and crustaceans, writing the List of the Specimens of Crustacea in the British Museum (1847) and A Popular History of Mammalia (1850).

[1] White suffered a nervous breakdown after the death of his first wife in 1861.

[1] John Obadiah Westwood named the insect species Taphroderes whitii in White's honour, after White pointed a specimen of that same insect out to Westwood during a visit to the British Museum.