Posted by

Joe Gray

Mutton chop whiskers. Sweeping grey hair. A slightly-too-large dark jacket. The appearance of Henry Walter Bates, as depicted in a biographical sketch published shortly after his death in February 1892, was very much that of a distinguished Victorian male scientist. And he had indisputably earned his stripes.

The contribution to science for which Bates is best known—as told in that sketch—arose from a trip he took to the A...