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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.

George Macdonald Home Playfair was born on 22 August 1850 at Shahjehanpore, Bengal, India, and educated at Cheltenham College, Gloucestershire, and Trinity College, Dublin. He joined the China Consular Service in 1872 as a student interpreter. He continued in the Consular Service until his retirement in 1901, rising through the ranks to become Foochow Consul in 1899. He retired to England with his wife, Winifred May Playfair, and died there in 1917.

Thomas Pell Platt was born in London, attended school in Norfolk, before entering Trinity College, Cambridge, in 1815. He became a scholar there in 1818, graduating in 1820 and gaining his Masters in 1823. Whilst at Cambridge he became involved in with the British and Foreign Bible Society and for some years acted as its Librarian. In 1823 Platt published a catalogue of Ethiopian biblical manuscripts in the Royal Library of Paris and in the library of the British and Foreign Bible Society; and in succeeding years collated and edited for the Society, texts of the New Testament. In 1829 he prepared an edition of the Syriac Gospels, and in 1844 edited an Amharic version of the Bible.

He became a Fellow of the Royal Asiatic Society in 1825 and served on the Committee of the Oriental Translation Fund. He was also a Fellow of the Society of Antiquaries in London. He died at Dulwich Hill, Surrey, in 1852

Terence A. Phelps was an independent British researcher who became interested in the controversy concerning excavations in Northern India. He died in February 2018.

Reverend William Pettigrew was born on 5th January, 1869 at Edinburgh, Scotland. He was an Educationist and Scottish-British Christian Missionary. William Pettigrew was bought up in a deeply religious Anglican family, he attended Bible camp every week and it was at Bible camp where he found his passion for Missionary work. It was at Livingstone College Leytone, England where he received his medical missionary education and also underwent training at the Ardington Aborigines Training School.

During the First World War William Pettigrew served in the Army as a Captain. Due to his work for the advancement of public interest in India the British Monarch honoured him with the medal 'Kaiser-I-Hind', which translates to 'Emperor of India'.

In 1890 William Pettigrew arrived in Calcutta (now Kolkata), India, working under the Ardington Missionary. He was accompanied by three other Missionaries and a Doctor, they were received by Reverend and Mrs Dalmasna and together they worked among the Bengalis. During his work among the Bengalis William Pettigrew started to gain better understanding of the Christian religious denominations and converted to Baptist Protestant denomination. It was Reverend Wright Hayna who baptised William Pettigrew into the Baptist Faith.

The Manipur Massacre happened in 1891, at the time William Pettigrew was working with the Baptist Missionary in Dacca. However after hearing about the massacre he prayed fervently to go and work in Manipur, this was made impossible by the Manipur Political Agent at the time. As he was so inspired to work in Manipur, William Pettigrew travelled to Silchar in 1892 to learn the Manipuri Language and was fortunately permitted to carry out his Missionary work in Manipur on 6th February, 1894. The first course of action William Pettigrew took was to open a Primary School in Chingama and enrol 50 students, he also began working under the American Baptist Foreign Mission Society.

However upon his arrival in the plain region of Manipur (Imphal), William Pettigrew was not permitted to preach Christianity. This resulted in William Pettigrew spending two years learning and writing Meitei Primers, Grammar, Basic Arithmetic and English-Benglai-Manipur Dictionary. Thereafter in the Singjamei Colony, William Pettigrew set up his second Primary School, which is now known as Pettigrew Junior Higher Secondary School.

Amongst many of William Pettigrew's achievements the most outstanding is his translation of the New Testament in Tangkhul dialect of Ukhrul, which was published in 1926 making it the only Holy Bible published in tribal language of Manipur. For his extensive work in scripture translations, William Pettigrew was honoured as a member of the British and Foreign Bible Society in 1928 and then elected as a member of The Asiatic Society of Bengal in 1930. His other literary achievements include 'Manipuri (Mitei) Grammar with Illustrative Sentences' and 'Tangkhul Naga Grammar and Dictionary (Ukhrul Dialect) with Illustrative Sentences'.

It was on March 1933 William Pettigrew completed his Missionary work in Manipur and returned back to England and ten years later on 10th April 1943 he passed away.

William Claxton Peppé was born in India in 1852, his father being an estate manager in Northern India. He was educated in Aberdeen but returned to Birdpur, India, to assist his father in 1873, becoming the manager in the early 1880s. In the spring of 1897, Peppé began to excavate a mound near the village of Piprahwa on the Birdpur estate. After weeks spent clearing away soil and dense scrub that covered the mound preliminary excavations exposed a solid mass of red fired brickwork that after further digging revealed itself to be a large dome roof roughly 130 feet in diameter. Peppé contacted Vincent Smith, an authority on ancient Indian history and archaeology, who decided that it was an unusually early example of an ancient Buddhist stupa probably dating from the era of Ashoka the Great.

Excavations continued in 1898 and after digging through eighteen feet of brickwork he found a huge slab of stone, the cover of an enormous stone coffer. Within the coffer were five vessels, none more than seven inches in height, containing quantities of stars in silver and gold, discs of gold leaf embossed with Buddhist symbols, numerous pearls of many sizes, drilled beads, stars and flowers cut in red or white cornelian, amethyst, topaz, garnet, coral and crystal. Also found inside the vessels were small pieces of bone and ash and on the side of one of them, in an ancient Pali character was an inscription that read:

"This shrine for relics of the Buddha, the August One, is that of the Sakya's, the brethren of the Distinguished One, in association with their sisters, and with their children and their wives."

William Peppé had seemingly unearthed one of the original eight stupas that were said to contain the ashes and bone fragments of the Buddha that werewas shared out after his cremation.

Within a week of the discovery a Siamese Buddhist monk, Jinavaravansa who was the grandson of King Rama III of Siam, arrived to ask that the relics go to his country. Peppé had already placed the relics at the disposal of the Government but he sent the request to the Commissioner of Gorakhpur. The British authorities agreed that some should be sent to Siam, other portions also went to the Museum in Kolkata, and to Colombo, Sri Lanka. Peppé was apportioned about one sixth of the jewels.

Peppé retired from his post in 1903 returning to England, but returnrd to India from 1920-1926, before finally retiring. He died in 1936.