Gertrude Caton-Thompson was born in London in 1888 and was educated at Eastbourne and in Paris. Her first experience in archaeology came in 1915 working as a bottle washer in an excavation in France. During World War I she worked for the British Ministry of Shipping as part of which she attended the Paris Peace Conference in 1919. In 1921 Caton-Thompson embarked on studies at University College, London. The following year she began attending courses at Newnham College, Cambridge, before joining further excavations in Egypt in 1924. While much of her archaeological work was in Egypt, she also went on expeditions in other countries, for example, Zimbabwe and South Arabia. Her many contributions to the field of archaeology include a technique for excavating archaeological sites, and information on Paleolithic to Predynastic civilizations in Zimbabwe and Egypt. Caton-Thompson held many official positions in organizations such as the Prehistoric Society and the Royal Anthropological Institute.
Caton-Thompson retired from fieldwork after the Second World War. A long time friend of Dorothy Hoare, a colleague from Cambridge, Caton-Thompson bought and shared a house with Hoare. After Hoare married Jose "Toty" M. de Navarro, another Cambridge lecturer in archaeology, the Navarros continued to share the house with Caton-Thompson. When she and the Navarros retired from academic life in 1956, Caton-Thompson moved with them to Broadway, Worcestershire. She resided with them and their son, Michael, for the rest of her life. She died in 1985, in her 97th year at Broadway.
Gertrude Alison Anderson edited 'The letters of Thomas Manning to Charles Lamb', published in 1926.
Gerald Tibbetts was born on the 22nd January 1926, in Brackley, Northants. He was called into the army just before the end of the Second World War when he was 18 and was posted to Malay and India in the Royal Army Education Corps. Through this experiences he developed an interest in languages with unique scripts and taught himself Arabic, Hebrew and Assyrian. In addition to this, he decided to study Arabic and Hebrew at Magdalen College in Oxford graduating in 1951.
Tibbetts also had an interest in library studies and took a Postgraduate qualification in Librarianship at London University. Whilst studying he was also associated with the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS), London, and completed a dissertation entitled: 'Arabia in early maps.' Whilst he was undertaking this course he met his future wife (Hazel). After completing the course he took up a post in the Library at the University of Singapore (1953) where he was responsible for the classification of works in oriental languages. Through this work he developed a specialist interest in medieval Arab navigation on which he wrote a number of publications. In 1956 he became the Deputy Librarian at the University of Khartoum where he had special responsibility for the collection of Arab books and manuscripts.
In 1960 he returned to the UK when he was appointed Librarian at the newly founded Oriental Institute in Oxford. However, in 1964, he became Deputy Librarian at Ahmadu Bello University in Zaria and then Librarian of the newly founded Abdullahi Bayero University College in Kano. In this post he received considerable support from the Ford foundation to assist in the gathering of Arabic and Islamic texts for the Library.
In 1967 he became Administrative Secretary at the University of London Library where he remained until his retirement in 1990. While working at the University he published two monographs under the auspices of the Royal Asiatic Society: 'Arab navigation in the Indian Ocean before the coming of the Portuguese' (1971) and 'A study of the Arabic texts containing material on South-east Asia' (1979). His work on these publications led to him being awarded a D.Litt at Oxford University in 1982. He also served on the RAS council between 1985-1988.
Tibbets was involved in 'The Sindbad Voyage project' (1980-1981) which was led by the explorer, Tim Severin, and involved recreating ancient voyages. Tibbetts gave specialist advice to the project. He served as an Associate Editor for The History of Cartography Series published by the University of Chicago Press.