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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.

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.

Henry Beveridge was born on 9th February 1837. He completed his education at Glasgow University and Queen's College, Belfast, before applying for the Indian Civil Service and he was posted to Bengal in 1857, serving in various posts until 1893. He married Annette Susanna Ackroyd, a graduate of Bedford College and translator of Persian and Turki text. Beveridge, himself, had many publications including The District of Bakarganj, The Trials of maharaja Nanda Kumar: A Narrative of a Judicial Murder and he was the editor for Alexander Rogers' TheThe Tūzuk-i-Jahāngīrī, or, Memoirs of Jahāngīr. They had two children, Annette Jeanie (d. 1956), and a son, William Beveridge (1879–1963), a noted economist who gave his name to the report associated with the foundation of the welfare state. Beveridge retired with his wife to England in 1893 but continued to be interested in Moghul history including returning to India in 1899 to search for historical manuscripts. He died on 8th November 1929.