Sir Samuel White Baker (1821-1893) was an English explorer, author, and administrator who explored the Upper Nile and discovered Lake Albert. He also sought to suppress the slave trade in the southern Sudan.

Samuel Baker was born in London on June 8, 1821. He was a large man with prodigious energy and great bravery and determination. A firm believer in the economic potential of the tropics, he went to manage his family's plantations in Mauritius in 1844 and later established his own estates in Ceylon. The plantations in Ceylon prospered, and he returned to England with his family. After his first wife, Henrietta, died in 1855, Baker traveled in the Crimea, Asia Minor, and the Balkans. In 1860 he married Florence Ninian von Sass, a young and beautiful Hungarian, and the following year he arrived in Cairo determined to seek the source of the River Nile.

Traveling up the Nile to Berber, Baker...