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Reginald Campbell Thompson was an archaeologist, Assyriologist, cuneiformist and fiction writer, along with being a member of the Royal Asiatic Society.

He was educated at St. Paul’s School in 1894, before becoming a student of Caius College, Cambridge, 1895-1899. After graduating from the college he became an assistant in the Egyptian and Assyrian Department, British Museum, a position he held from 1899 to 1905, during which he published his first book, ‘The Reports of Magicians and Astrologers of Nineveh and Babylon’ (1900) and undertook several trips to Algeria (1901), Egypt (1902), Tripoli (1903) and Iraq (1904-1905). During his trip in Iraq he conducted an excavation at Nineveh and found the remains of the temple of Nabu.

After resigning from the British Museum in December 1905 Thompson entered the service of the Sudanese government, where he conducted a survey until summer 1906, after which he accepted the post of Assistant Professor of Semitic Language at the University of Chicago, which he held from 1907 to 1909. In the following years Thompson continued with his excavations in the Middle East, including in Carchemish (1911), at a Coptic site in Wadi Sargah (1913-1914) and – interrupted by his service for the Mesopotamian Campaign during WWI – in Abu Shahrain (1918). He returned to Nineveh for an excavation from 1927 to 1932.

Alongside his lifelong interest in archaeology and Assyrian studies, Thompson also had a passion for literature, which resulted in three fictional works, including ‘A Song of Araby’ (1921) and ‘A Mirage of Sheba’ (1923) – both published under the pseudonym of John Guisborough – and ‘A Digger’s Fancy: A Melodrama’ (1938).

Reinhold F.G. Müller was an historian of medicine in Germany who worked in the field of the Indian history of medicine from the 1920s to the 1960s. He influenced German, American and Indian researchers. Müller studied a wide range of topics including the history of Indian gynaecology, psychiatry, immunology and general practice and his subsequent articles were published in the principal contemporary magazines.

Adam Clarke was a Wesleyan minister and theologian, serving three times as the President of the Wesleyan Methodist Conference. Born in Ireland, he became a Methodist in 1778 and a minister in 1782, firstly in Bradford (Wiltshire). He also served in the Channel Islands, Cornwall, Ireland, rural Lancashire, and the Shetlands (where he was the effective planter of Methodism in the 1820s). He was a keen theologian with progressive views linking rationalism with spirituality. As a scholar, he studied a variety of subjects including folk tales, and romances, as well as Persian, Arabic, Ethiopian, Hindu, Coptic and Sanskrit texts, and subjects including alchemy and the occult, witchcraft, medical curiosities, astronomy, mineralogy, and conchology, while maintaining an overriding interest in the classics and the scriptures. He was involved in the conversion of 2 Buddhist monks from Sri Lanka.

He was elected a member of several learned including the British and Foreign Bible Society, the American Antiquarian Society, the Royal Irish Academy, the Geological Society of London, the American Historical Institute, and was a founder member of the Royal Asiatic Society. Clarke died from an attack of cholera on 26 August 1832.

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.

Reynold Alleyne Nicholson was a scholar of both Islamic literature and Islamic mysticism and widely regarded as one of the greatest Rumi scholars and translators in the English language. He was an original trustee of the Gibb Memorial Trust and for many years served as its Chairman.