Baker, Sir Samuel White (1821-1893), was an English explorer of Africa. He became known as an expert on Egypt and Sudan chiefly through his two books, The Albert N’yanza, Great Basin of the Nile (1866) and The Nile Tributaries of Abyssinia (1867). He also wrote popular books on hunting and nature.
Baker was born on June 8, 1821, in London. During the late 1850’s and early 1860’s, he and Florence von Sass, whom he later married, explored the region of the White Nile, the Blue Nile, and the Atbara River in Africa. On March 14, 1864, Baker and his party found a great lake. The lake, which he named Albert Nyanza (now also called Lake Albert), lies between Uganda and the Democratic Republic of the Congo and is an important source of the Nile River.
Baker was knighted in 1866. In 1869, Ismail Pasha, the ruler of Egypt, appointed him as governor general of Sudan, which was then controlled by Egypt. Ismail told Baker to eliminate the slave trade. Baker added new territory in Sudan for Egypt and defeated some prominent slave traders but failed to stop the slave trade. He returned to England in 1873. He died on Dec. 30, 1893.
