Professor research covered a wide area from ancient ties between Mongolia, India and Tibet to Genghis Khan's Mongolian Empire to Mongolian communism in the 20th century.
From 1987, he served as the General Secretary for the International Association for Mongol Studies and worked as a visiting professor at universities and research institutes in several countries, including the UK, Russia, France, India, and Japan. He wrote books, including the "Mongolian Historiography in the 13th-17th Centuries", and contributed various chapters/volumes to UNESCO's History of Civilizations of Central Asia.
Bira was one of founders and the Honorary President of the International Fund of Tengri Research, President of the Roerich Society of Mongolia, and Director of the Nicholas Roerich Museum and Shambhala Art Institute. He worked with Glenn Mullin to save the Roerich house in Mongolia and restore it as a museum and art gallery. Bira was the oldest living student of George Roerich.
In 2006 he was awarded the Fukuoka Prize. Bira died on 13 February 2022, at the age of 94.
Nicholas Sims-Williams, FBA (born 11 April 1949, Chatham, Kent) is a British professor of the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS), University of London, where he is Emeritus Professor of Iranian and Central Asian Studies at the School of Languages, Cultures and Linguistics, Centre for Iranian Studies. Sims-Williams is a scholar who specializes in Central Asian history, particularly the study of Sogdian and Bactrian languages. He is also a member of the advisory council of the Iranian Studies journal.
Sims-Williams recently worked on a dedicatory Sogdian inscription, dated to the 1st–3rd centuries CE, that was discovered at Kultobe in Kazakhstan. It alludes to military operations of the principal towns of Sogdiana against the nomads in the north. The inscription tends to confirm the confederational organization of the Kangju state and its various allies that was known previously from the Chinese texts.
David Pocock was born in London and studied under FR Leavis at Pembroke College, Cambridge. In the early 1950s he went to Oxford and under the supervision of Edward Evans-Pritchard, carried out field research among Asian migrants in east Africa and subsequent work in Gujarat which resulted in two monographs. His collaboration with Louis Dumont led to the founding, in 1957, of the journal Contributions to Indian Sociology, which they wrote jointly for five years.
He moved to the University of Sussex, Brighton, in 1966, becoming Professor of Social Anthropology, retiring in 1987.
James Barr was born in Glasgow and went to Edinburgh University. He was ordained as a Church of Scotland minister and served for two years in Tiberias, Israel. He published “The Semantics of Biblical Language” in 1961 and became professor of Semitic languages at Manchester in 1965. He moved to Oxford in 1976 and thence to Vanderbilt University, Nashville in 1989, publishing further books on theology.
Henry Ferdinand (Heinrich) Blochmann (8 January 1838 – 13 July 1878), was a German orientalist and scholar of Persian language and literature who spent most of his career in India, where he worked first as a professor, and eventually as the principal at Calcutta Madrasa, now Aliah University in present Kolkata. He authored one of the first major English translations of Ain-i-Akbari, the 16th-century Persian language chronicle of Mughal emperor Akbar, published in 1873.
Born in Dresden he came to England in 1858 and enlisted in the British Army so that he could travel to India. After leaving the army he joined the Peninsular and Oriental Company as an interpreter. He was befriended by William Nassau Lees, the principal of the Calcutta Madrasa, and Blochmann, aged 22, became an assistant professor of Arabic and Persian there. In 1861 he graduated M.A. and LL.D. at the University of Calcutta, choosing Hebrew for the subject of his examination. In the following year he left the Madrasa to become pro-rector and professor of mathematics, at Doveton College; but returned to the Madrasa in 1865, and remained there for the rest of his life. He was principal when he died in 1878.
Born in Hungary in 1916, Denis Sinor studied Altaic linguistics. Between 1939 and 1948, he held various teaching and research posts in Hungary and France. After the war, where he served as a member of the French Resistance and later in the Free French Forces, he joined the faculty of Oriental Studies at Cambridge University. During this time he served on the Council of the Royal Asiatic Society as Honorary Secretary from 1955-1962.
In 1962, he moved to the United States, bringing his expertise to Indiana University where he created the Department of Uralic and Altaic Studies, now Central Eurasian Studies. In and outside of the department, Sinor worked to promote an appreciation of Inner Asia beyond its geographical and political neighbours, China and Russia. At IU, Sinor established two key and renowned resources for Inner Asian Studies. In 1967, he founded, and until 1981 directed, the Asian Studies Research Institute, known today as the Research Institute for Inner Asian Studies, whose collection of materials is unparalled. Sinor received many honours within and outside the United States. He was a member of the French and Hungarian Academies, he was an Honorary Professor of the Oriental Institute of the Russian Academy, was twice the holder of a Guggenheim Fellowship, and was repeatedly honoured by UNESCO.
But perhaps Sinor's most significant contribution to Inner Asian studies and Indiana University is the Inner Asian and Uralic National Resource Center (IAUNRC). The only one of its kind in the country, the centre has helped train and support a strong lineage of scholars and has helped support the study of such languages as Estonian, Finnish, Hungarian, Mongolian, Persian/Tajik, Tibetan, Turkish and Uzbek.
Professor Sinor died in January 2011.
Sir Gore Ouseley, 1st Baronet GCH, PC (24 June 1770 – 18 November 1844), was a British entrepreneur, linguist and diplomat. He was born in Ireland and educated at home. Whilst serving the British Government and posted in Lucknow he became a friend of the local Nawab Saadat Ali Khan and was responsible for building a palace called Dilkusha Kothi on the banks of the Gomti near Lucknow. This palace, a copy of the English Baroque stately home of Seaton Delaval Hall, stood for about fifty years until it was damaged in the Siege of Lucknow. Ouseley was made a baronet in 1808 with the recommendation of Lord Wellesley.
From 1810 Ouseley served as ambassador to Persia, the first ambassador since the time of Charles I. Ouseley was involved in negotiating treaties with Persia and Russia including the Treaty of Gulistan. He left Persia in 1814, stopping off in St Petersburg. While in Russia, he was awarded the Grand Cordon of the Russian Order of St. Alexander Nevsky.
Ouseley spent his final years in England and in 1835, he served as the High Sheriff of Buckinghamshire. He died in 1844 died at Hall Barn Park, Beaconsfield, Buckinghamshire.