Stimpson became an important early contributor to the work of the Smithsonian Institution and later, director of the Chicago Academy of Sciences.

[1] He also made improvements in rifles, and suggested the placing of the flange on the inside of railway car wheels instead of on the outside, as had been the custom.

When fourteen years of age he read with delight Edwin Swett's work on geology, and soon after this a copy of Augustus Addison Gould's Report on the Invertebrata of Massachusetts filled him with exultant enthusiasm.

When Kennicott died in Russian America (present day Alaska) in 1866, Stimpson chose to stay in Chicago out of loyalty to his friend and the Academy.

The Academy's "fireproof" building was destroyed in the Great Chicago Fire of 1871 (later rebuilt), along with all of Stimpson's unpublished manuscripts and the specimens they were based upon.

Ronald Scott Vasile, William Stimpson and the Golden Age of American Natural History, Northern Illinois University Press, 2018.