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Alexander Gerard was born in Aberdeen in 1792, son of Gilbert Gerard and grandson of Alexander Gerard, the Scottish minister and philosopher. He and his two brothers all served in India. Gerard graduated from Kings College, Aberdeen, in 1808 when he was appointed to a cadetship in the 13th Bengal Infantry. He was employed in the survey of the route from Dehli to Lahore in 1812. In 1814 he was promoted to lieutenant, and appointed to survey the Saharanpur district, which he completed in 1819. He was surveyor of the Narmada valley in 1825, and surveyor in Malwa and Rajputana in 1826 and 1827. During the surveys in the Himalayas he ascended heights previously believed to be inaccessible, and penetrated into Tibet as far as the frontier pickets of Chinese would allow. Some of the earliest discoveries of the geological structure and remains of the Himalayan ranges come from his work. Gerard was a Persian scholar and versed in other oriental languages. He was also an accurate topographer and observant traveller. Bad health, the result of hardships endured in the course of his survey duties and travels, led to his retirement from the service on 22 February 1836. He died in Aberdeen on 15 December 1839, aged 48.

Joseph Dalton Hooker, was born in Halesworth, Sussex, the second son of the botanist William Jackson Hooker. From the age of seven Hooker attended his father's lectures at Glasgow University. He was educated at Glasgow High school before studying medicine at Glasgow University. He graduated in 1839, entered the Naval Medical Service and joined polar explorer Captain James Clark Ross's Antarctic expedition to the South Magnetic Pole (1839-1843) after receiving a commission as Assistant-Surgeon on HMS Erebus. in 1845 he took up the position of botanist to the Geological Survey of Great Britain. He travelled to India and the Himalaya from 1847-1851. It is from this period that much of the correspondence in the archive belongs. He stayed with Hodgson during this period and would send him letters whilst he was travelling with Archibald Campbell (see BHH/3/1).

Hooker continued to travel including Palestine in 1860, Morocco in 1871 and the west of the United States in 1877.

In 1855 Hooker was appointed Assistant Director of the Royal Botanical Gardens at Kew and he succeeded his father as Director in 1865. He was a Fellow of the Royal Society and served as its President from 1873-1877.

Hooker married Frances Harriet Henslow in 1851 and they had four sons and three daughters, one of whom was named Brian Harvey Hodgson Hooker. Frances died in 1874 and Hooker remarried in 1876, Lady Hyacinth Jardine, and they had two sons. Hooker died at home in Berkshire on 10 December 1911 and was buried alongside his father at St. Anne's Church, Kew.

Laurence Austine Waddell was born in Glasgow, where he was educated, obtaining a bachelor's degree in Medicine followed by a master's degree in both Surgery and Chemistry at Glasgow University in 1878. In 1879 he visited Ceylon and Burma which sparked his interest in Buddhism. In 1880 Waddell joined the British Indian Army and served as a medical officer with the Indian Medical Service. In 1881 he became a Professor of Chemistry and Pathology at the Medical College of Kolkata, India. While working in India, Waddell also studied Sanskrit and edited the Indian Medical Gazette. He became Assistant Sanitary Commissioner under the government of India.

Between 1885-1887 Waddell took part in the British expedition that annexed Upper Burma. After his return from Burma, Waddell was stationed in the Darjeeling district of India, and was appointed Principal Medical Officer in 1888.

Waddell travelled extensively through India in the 1890s including through Nepal, Sikkim, and the Tibetan border, researching Buddhist practices. He learnt Tibetan and made several secret visits there. He also collected Buddhist antiquities and was concerned with the quest to discover the birthplace of Buddha. He also continued his medical practice with the Indian Medical Service including serving in the Boxer Rebellion in China. He was in Malakand in 1902 and part of the Tibetan Mission to Lhasa in 1903-4.

He returned to England and was Professor of Tibetan at University College, London from 1906-1908. In 1908, Waddell started to learn Sumerian and spent the later years of his life studying Near East culture and Indo-European language origins. He died in 1938.