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Sir Alexander Johnston, PC, FRS (25 April 1775 – 6 March 1849), was born in Carnsalloch, Dumfriesshire but moved with his family to India when his father received a posting in the Madras Presidency. He returned to England to study law. Johnston became a British colonial official who served as third Chief Justice of Ceylon and second Advocate Fiscal of Ceylon. He introduced a range of administrative reforms to the country and was an advocate of the rights of the native people. He was also an orientalist and along with Henry Thomas Colebrooke and others he was a founding member of the Royal Asiatic Society of Great Britain and Ireland.

Professor Abraham Poliak (also known as Polak) was born on the 2nd September 1910 in Ochakiv, a small city in Southern Ukraine, then part of the Russian Empire. Little information is known about his early years except that he emigrated with his family in 1923 to Mandatory Palestine where they settled in the city of Haifa. Poliak moved to Jerusalem in 1930 where he studied at the Hebrew University and published numerous articles in the daily newspaper, Davar, about Israel's history and politics. In 1934 Poliak received his Master's qualification in Culture of Islam.

Poliak continued in academia and was awarded his PhD in 1936 for his thesis, History of Land relationships in Egypt, Syria and Israel during the late Middle Ages. During this period he continued to write a number of significant articles connected with his research (notably around the Khazars) which appeared in foreign publications.

In 1937 he became a member of The Royal Asiatic Society. His work, Feudalism in Egypt, Syria, Palestine, and the Lebanon 1250-1900 was published under the Society's Prize Publication Fund in 1939. Copies of this publication are held within the Society's collections.

Following the formation of the state of Israel in 1948, Poliak was enlisted to the Israel Defense Forces and began giving talks at the University Institute for Israeli Culture. Between 1961-1966, Professor Poliak served as a Professor of History of the Middle Ages at Tel Aviv University and founded and directed the Department of Middle-Eastern Studies. During this period he was also invited to participate in professional conferences across the world and was also a member of the International African Institute in London.

Poliak never married and died in his home in Tel Aviv on the 5th March 1970, aged 59.

Marc Aurel Stein was born in Budapest in 1862. He first studied Sanskrit with Roth and Geldner in Tübingen and subsequently came to London in 1883 to continue his study of oriental languages. He went as Registrar to Lahore University in 1887 and became Principal of the Oriental College in 1888. He was interested in Central Asia both in its geography, archaeology and strategic position. Stein is renowned for his archaeological exploration in Eastern Central Asia (1900-01, 1906-08, 1913-16, 1930-31), India, Iran, Iraq and Jordan, and for his pioneering work on the early civilizations of the Silk Road. He is especially famous for the discovery of the hidden library of documents and Buddhist paintings at the Caves of the Thousand Buddhas (Qianfodong) at Dunhuang, Gansu province, China.
He became a British national in 1904. Stein received a number of honours throughout his career. This Collection reveals some of them. He was conferred with the Gold Medal of the Royal Asiatic Society in 1943. Stein wrote extensively about his travels and within the RAS Collections are original photographs from which the plates were taken for his many publications. Stein died in Kabul on 26 October 1943 and is buried in Kabul's British Cemetery.