Clinton Thomas Dent was born in 1850 and educated at Eton and Trinity College, Cambridge. He trained as a surgeon becoming Senior Surgeon at the St George's Hospital Medical School, London, Consulting Surgeon at the Belgrave Hospital for Children, Chief Surgeon to the Metropolitan Police from 1904, and a Fellow of the Royal College of Surgeons. However he also had a love of mountaineering and was one of the few British climbers to attempt the unclimbed peaks in the Alps including the Aiguille du Dru (3,754 m), a steep granite peak in the Mont Blanc massif.
With British alpinists such as Albert Mummery, A. W. Moore and D. W. Freshfield, Dent was involved in the pioneering of climbing in the Caucasus, where he made the first ascent of Gestola (4,860 m) with W. F. Donkin in 1886. He was President of the Alpine Club from 1886-1889.
Dent died in 1912 from a virulent septicaemia.
Bosworth was born in Sheffield. He received a Bachelor of Arts degree in modern history from St John's College, Oxford,and both MA in Middle Eastern studies and PhD degrees from the University of Edinburgh. He held permanent posts at the University of St Andrews, the University of Manchester and the Center for the Humanities at Princeton University. He was also a visiting professor at the University of Exeter. Bosworth was a historian and Orientalist, specialising in Arabic and Iranian studies.
Christopher Clay was a student at Trinity College, Cambridge.
Gerard Clauson was educated at Eton and Oxford becoming a Boden scholar in Sanskrit in 1911, Hall-Houghtman Syriac Prizeman, 1913; and James Mew Arabic Scholar, 1920. He followed a career in the Civil Service which was to culminate in serving as the Assistant Under-Secretary of State in the Colonial Office, 1940-1951. However he was also a skilled linguist and wrote papers on philology. When he died in May 1974, he had been a member of the Royal Asiatic Society for 62 years.