Gilbert White (July 18, 1720 – June 26, 1793) was a pioneering naturalist and ornithologist.

White was born in his grandfather's vicarage at Selborne in Hampshire. He was educated by a private tutor in Basingstoke before going to Oriel College, Oxford. He obtained his deacon's orders in 1746, being fully ordained in 1749, and subsequently held several curacies in Hampshire and Wiltshire, including Selborne's neighbouring parishes of Newton Valence and Farringdon, as well as Selborne itself on four separate occasions. In 1752/53 White held the office of Junior Proctor at Oxford and was Dean of Oriel. In 1757 he became non-resident perpetual curate of Moreton Pinkney in Northamptonshire. After the death of his father in 1758, White moved back into the family home at The Wakes in Selborne, which he eventually inherited in 1763. In 1784 he became curate of Selborne for the fourth time, remaining so until his death. Having studied at Oriel at the behest of his uncle, he was ineligible to be considered for the permanent living of Selborne, which was in the gift of Magdalen College.

White is best known for his The Natural History and Antiquities of Selborne (1789). This was a compilation of his letters to Thomas Pennant, the leading English zoologist of the day, and also the Hon. Daines Barrington, a Welsh barrister and another member of the Royal Society. These letters contained White's discoveries about local birds and animals. He believed in distinguishing birds by observation rather than by collecting specimens, and was thus one of the first people to separate the similar-looking Chiffchaff, Willow Warbler and Wood Warbler by means of their song.

White is regarded by many as England's first ecologist and one of the founders of modern respect for nature.^[1] He said of the earthworm (1770):

Earthworms, though in appearance a small and despicable link in the chain of nature, yet, if lost, would make a lamentable chasm [...] worms seem to be the great promoters of vegetation, which would proceed but lamely without them...

White and William Markwick collected records of the dates of emergence of more than 400 plant and animal species, White recording in Hampshire and Markwick in Sussex between 1768 and 1793. These data, summarised in The Natural History and Antiquities of Selborne as the earliest and latest dates for each event over the 25-year period, are among the earliest examples of modern phenology.

Gilbert White's House in Selborne

White's frequent accounts of a tortoise inherited from his aunt in The Natural History and Antiquities of Selborne form the basis for Verlyn Klinkenborg's book, Timothy; or, Notes of an Abject Reptile (2006), as well as for Sylvia Townsend Warner's The Portrait of a Tortoise (1946).

His house in Selborne, The Wakes, now contains the Gilbert White Museum, as well as the Oates Memorial Museum, commemorating Frank and Lawrence Oates.

A biography of White, by Richard Mabey was published by Century Hutchinson in 1986, and won the Whitbread Biography of the Year award.

A documentary about White, presented by historian Michael Wood, was broadcast by BBC Four in 2006.

Gilbert White's famous work has been continuously in print since its first publication and is one of the most frequently published books in the English language. The paperback edition of The Illustrated Natural History of Selborne was last reprinted by Thames & Hudson in 2006.

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Further reading