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David Hawkes was born in London. He entered Oxford University in 1942 as a student in Christ Church, where he studied the Latin and Greek Classics. After his first year, during the height of the Second World War, Hawkes was recruited to study Japanese in London. His talent for East Asian languages was soon recognized by his military superiors, and he was made an instructor to the Japanese codebreakers. After the war's end in 1945, Hawkes returned to Oxford, where he transferred from Classics into the newly established Honours School of Chinese. Hawkes studied at Oxford until 1947, when he moved to China to continue his studies at Peking University. He left China in 1951 and continued his study at Oxford becoming Oxford's chair of Chinese in 1959. Hawkes formally retired from Chinese scholarship in 1984 and relocated with his wife to Wales, donating his 4,500-volume Chinese book collection to the National Library of Wales. He died in Oxford in 2009.

Graves Chamney Haughton (1788-1849) was educated in England before travelling to India in 1808 with the East India Company. He became proficient in Hindustani, studying at Fort William College. He returned to England in 1815 and in 1817 was appointed assistant professor at Haileybury College and held the post of professor of Sanskrit and Bengali from 1819 to 1827. He was supported by various prominent academics when he attempted in 1832 to be elected as the first Boden Professor of Sanskrit at Oxford University but he stood down in favour of Horace Hayman Wilson. He was a founding member of the Royal Asiatic Society and served as its Librarian from 1831-1837. He died of cholera in Paris on 28 August 1849.