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Edward William West, the oldest of 12 children, was born in Pentonville, London, on 2 May 1824. He was the son of William West, the owner of many cotton presses in India, and Margaret Anderson. His ancestors were "builders and mechanics." He was often ill as a child and therefore home-schooled. He entered a school at Pentonville from the age of 11 to 15. He then started studying engineering at King's College London where he won High Honours in 1842.

His parents had lived in India for some years before their marriage. His father lived in Bombay, and his mother, in Calcutta. In 1844, West went east to superintend the large establishment of family owned-cotton presses in Bombay. He worked there until 1850. During this time, he had a close relationship with his Parsee butler, testament to which is in the unpublished memoir of his brother, Arthur William West, and a box of Edward West's papers, both held at the British Library.

In 1852, he became the Chief Engineer on the Great Indian Peninsular Railway Project. More on this can be found in the British Library.

From as early as 1850, he studied the Kanheri caves in Mumbai. Guide to Kanheri Caves suggests that his most important contribution to academia before he moved to translating the "Pahlavi Texts" was of one of the sealings that "depicted a seated Buddha in Bhumisparsha Mudhra with ornaments around the figure and an inscription underneath" (Wani 6). He presented his findings to the Bombay Asiatic Society on the 12 April 1860 which was then subsequently published in the January edition of the BRAS under the title, "Copies of Inscriptions from the Buddhist Cave-Temples of Kánheri, &c. in the Island of Sulsette, with a plan of the Kanheri caves" (West 1861).

West's legacy remains in his translation of Zoroastrian texts from Pahlavi to English. He was in close contact with the Parsi community in Bombay. Arthur West's autobiography and narration of Edward West's stories show the presence of Parsi butlers in his house and managers in the cotton press.

A commonly accepted speculation regarding West's inspiration to translate the Pahlavi texts was Martin Haug's essay "Essays on the Sacred Language, Writings, and Religion of the Parsis" (Bombay 1862). An edition of the same text "edited and enlarged" by West was published in 1907.

West began his work on a copy of the Avesta, or the scriptures of Zoroaster, accompanied by a Gujurati translation of the Avesta and Dhanjibhai Framji's, 'Pahlavi Grammar' (1855). He then continued his study of Pahlavi with Haug. Haug and West returned to Europe in 1866, when Haug was appointed Professor of Sanskrit and Comparative Philology at the University of Munich. West went to Munich for six years (1867-73) when he spent his time translating the Pahlavi texts of Zoroastrianism. On 17 June 1871, the University of Munich bestowed an honorary doctorate of Philosophy upon him. After a year in England (1873-4) West revisited India (1874-6) in order to procure manuscripts of the important Pahlavi books, 'Dēnkart' and 'Dātistan-i Dēnīk'; he paid a last visit to the Kanheri caves on 6 February 1875.

He meticulously drawn plans of the cotton presses and new developments can be seen in the British Library. The traces of this meticulousness are also observed in his Personal Papers held by the Royal Asiatic Society.

From 1876 to 1897, West worked on translating the Pahlavi Texts Vol. 1-5 for Prof. Max Müller's Sacred Books of the East Series. His work was widely recognised by Zoroastrian and Orientalist scholars from the West and the East. His meticulous notes in these papersshow his commitment to the collation of several manuscripts, many of them kept in poor condition by the archives and libraries. Through his footnotes, he marked the differences and similarities he found in the manuscripts, while paying attention to the interweaving of different languages in a single MS. (i.e. presence of Sanskrit, Persian, and Gujarati).

His service to the profession was widely recognised: The Bavarian Academy of Sciences in 1887 made him a corresponding member; he was a member of the Royal Asiatic Society of Great Britain and Ireland, and on 6 July 1901 he was presented with the Society's Triennial Gold Medal. The American Oriental Society awarded him an honorary membership. West was also in correspondence with contemporary scholars including Peshotan Bharamji Sanjana. Sanjana was interested in the inconsistencies that West found between his father's manuscript and other copies of the same manuscript.

He died in his eighty-first year at Watford, on 4 February 1905. He was survived by his wife Sarah Margaret Barclay, and by an only son, Max, an artist.

Edward Walter Hutchinson served as a British Vice-Consul in Saigon, Vietnam and as British Consul in Chiengmai, Thailand. Hutchinson is the author of Adventurers in Siam in the Seventeenth Century published in 1940. He is also known for his annotated translation of the Mémoire du Père de Bèze , which was published in 1968 under the title 1688 Revolution in Siam .

Edward Rehatsek was born in 1819 in Ilok (then in Hungary, now in Croatia). He graduated from the university in Budapest with a masters degree in civil engineering. He left Hungary in 1842, visiting Paris before spending four years in the United States of America. In 1847 he sailed to India, where he remained for the rest of his life. He studied Asian languages and literature and accompanied Dr Bhau Daji on his research travels. As a competent mathematician and good Latin scholar, he became employed as Professor of Mathematics and of Latin at Wilson College, Bombay, remaining in post until 1871, besides giving private lessons in Latin, Persian, Arabic and French.
Rehatsek became an Examiner at Bombay University from 1869-1881, being made a Felwow in 1873 and twice being the Wilson Philological Lecturer in Hebrew and Semitic languages. In 1874 he was elected an honorary member of the Bombay Asiatic Society in recognition of his oriental learning. Rehatsek translated a number of Persian and Arabic works including "Biography of Our Lord Muhammad, the Apostle of Allah" according to Ibn Hisham, the first two parts of "Mirkhond's General History" and the first part of "The Rauzat-us-safa" for the Oriental Translation Fund.
Rehatsek remained unmarried and lived something of the life of a recluse. he had no servants and cooked his food using a spirit lamp. He owned a small house with little furniture but many books on which he worked continuously. He died on 11 December 1891 and was given a Hindu cremation at his request. His savings were left for the education of poor boys in Bombay.

Professor Edward H. S. Simmonds was born in 1919 at Littlehampton, Sussex. He was educated at Lord Weymouth's school, Warminster. He was enrolled into a course that sponsored by the Institute of Bankers in 1937 because his father want him to be a distributor of agricultural machinery and farming supplies. But Simmonds enlisted in the ranks of the Royal Horse Artillery and was commissioned in 1940. He was involved in the Malayan Campaign and the surrender of Singapore. He spend four years as a prisoner of war in Singapore and Thai camps. After returning to England, he went to Keble College Oxford in 1946 to study English Language and Literature. However Simmonds continued to be interested in the Thai people and their culture, thus, leading to him teaching linguistics at the School of Oriental and African Studies, London, from 1948. He remained at SOAS until his retirement in 1982 from the position of Professor of the Languages and Literatures of South East Asia.

Simmonds played also a major role in the Royal Asiatic Society. He became a Fellow in 1954 and served as Director (1965-68), Vice-President (1968-72 & 1976-80) and President (1973-76). He was married to Patricia Simmonds, actress and artist. He died in 1994.

Edward Fitzgerald was an English poet and writer, best known as the poet of the first and most famous English translation of The Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám. He was born in Suffolk, lived part of his childhood in France, and attended Trinity College, Cambridge. He became a lifelong friend of Bernard Quaritch who published his the Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám in 1857, at first anonymously.

Edward Denison Ross was born in London in 1871. He was educated at Marlborough College and University College, London, before going to Paris and Strasbourg to study languages. In 1896 he was appointed Professor of Persian at University College London and remained there until 1901 when he took up an appointment as Principal of the Calcutta Madrasah Muslim College, the city's chief educational centre for teaching Arabic and Persian. In 1911, this role was combined with that of Officer in Charge of the Records of the Government of India and Assistant Secretary in the Department of Education. In 1914 Dension Ross returned to the UK and became First Assistant at the British Museum, working in the Prints and Drawings Department cataloguing the Stein Collection. Denison Ross became the first Director of the School of Oriental Studies (later the School of Oriental and African Studies) in 1916, remaining as such until his retirement in 1938.

Ceylonese-British administrator and Pali scholar