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Angus C. Graham was born in 1919, in Penarth, Wales, and was educated in Penarth and Shropshire before attending Corpus Christi College, Oxford, where he attained a BA in Theology in 1940. He served in the Royal Air Force during WWII, taking a Services Japanese course at the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS) in 1944-45 which led to him acting as a Japanese interpreter in Malaya and Thailand from 1945-46. Graham attained a BA Hons Chinese from SOAS in 1949 and became a Chinese translator attached to the Malayan police in Penang from 1949-1950.

Graham took up his first academic post in 1950 as a Lecturer in Classical Chinese at SOAS completing his PhD thesis in 1953. He became a Reader in 1966, Professor of Classical Chinese in 1971 and a Fellow of the British Academy in 1981. During this period he also was a Visiting Fellow of Hong Kong University (1954-55), Consulting editor of "Foundations of Language" (commencing 1964), a Visiting Professor at University of Michigan (1970) and a Fellow of the Society of Humanities, Cornell University (1972-73).

Graham's research focused mainly around Chinese and western philosophy. He was concerned with the relations between philosophical concepts and the structure of the Chinese language. He published many books and articles connected to his research. He was also interested in poetry and short story writing and translation of early Chinese poetry.

Graham was appointed Emeritus Professor of Classical Chinese at SOAS in 1984. Post-retirement from SOAS he held a number of visiting appointments including at the Institute of East Asian Philosophies, Singapore, Faculty of Asian Studies, The Australian National University, Canberra, National Tsing Hua University, Taiwan, Brown University, Rhode Island, and the Department of Philosophy, University of Hawaii at Manoa.

Graham died on 26 March 1991.

Karl Hugo Hahn was a Baltic German missionary and linguist who worked in South Africa and South-West Africa for most of his life. Together with Franz Heinrich Kleinschmidt, he set up the first Rhenish mission station to the Herero people in Gross Barmen. Hahn is known for his scientific work on the Herero language.

David Haliburton (1774-c.1833) of Muirhouselaw, Berwickshire, who in later life lived at Bushey Grove, Hertfordshire, was a distant cousin of Sir Walter Scott though his paternal grandmother. He served in the East India Company, as a member of the Board of Revenue and was responsible for exposing the corrupt practices of Edward and John Holland who both served as Governor of Madras. They used Avadhanum Paupiah to amass forged evidence against Haliburton which ended Haliburton's career in India. However, the scheme was uncovered by Lord Cornwallis, Governor-General of India, and Haliburton exonerated. Haliburton was a founder member of the Royal Asiatic Society. He never married and was the last of the line of Haliburtons written about by Walter Scott in his Memorials of The Haliburtons.

Dr Francis Buchanan, later known as Francis Hamilton or Francis Buchanan-Hamilton, was a Scottish physician who made significant contributions as a geographer, zoologist, and botanist while living in India. He was born at Bardowie, Scotland, and studied medicine at the University of Edinburgh, graduating in 1783. He also studied botany. He first served on merchant ships to Asia and then joined the Bengal Medical Service in 1794. Buchanan's training was ideal as a surgeon naturalist for a political mission to the Kingdom of Ava in Burma under Captain Symes. The Ava mission set sail on the Sea Horse and passed the Andaman Islands, Pegu, and Ava before returning to Calcutta. Subsequently Buchanan-Hamilton was asked to survey South India. He conducted a survey of Mysore in 1800 and a survey of Bengal from 1807-1814.

For the survey of Bengal he was asked to report on topography, history, antiquities, the condition of the inhabitants, religion, natural productions (particularly fisheries, forests, mines, and quarries), agriculture (covering vegetables, implements, manure, floods, domestic animals, fences, farms, and landed property, fine and common arts, and commerce (exports and imports, weights and measures, and conveyance of goods). His conclusions were made into a series of reports, of which these papers are the manuscripts. He also collected and described many new plants in the region, and collected a series of watercolours of Indian and Nepalese plants and animals, probably painted by Indian artists, which are now in the library of the Linnean Society of London.

He succeeded William Roxburgh to become the superintendent of the Calcutta botanical garden in 1814, but had to return to Britain in 1815 due to his ill health and in the same year he inherited his mother's estate and in consequence took her surname of Hamilton, referring to himself as "Francis Hamilton, formerly Buchanan" or simply "Francis Hamilton". However, he is variously referred to by others as "Buchanan-Hamilton", "Francis Hamilton Buchanan", or "Francis Buchanan Hamilton". From 1815 until 1829 he was Regius Keeper of the Royal Botanic Garden in Edinburgh replacing Dr William Roxburgh.