Lucian Scherman was born on October 10, 1864, in Posen. He was a German Indologist, curator of the Ethnology Museum in Munich, and also a professor at Munich University. After attending high school, in 1882, he began studying Sanskrit at the University of Breslau. In 1883 he moved to Munich, where he continued his studies at the Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich. Scherman received his doctorate in the summer of 1885. From October 1910 to December 1911, Scherman, and his wife Christine, undertook an extended research trip to Sri Lanka, Burma, Pakistan and India. Scherman's scholarship led to the creation of a Department of Asian Ethnology with an emphasis on Indian Culture. He died on May 29, 1946 in Hanson, Massachusetts.
Mary Rowlatt was born in Cairo in 1908. She represented the fifth generation of her family to make its home in Egypt. Her father, Sir Frederick Rowlatt, aged four, was present at the opening of the Suez Canal, and later became a governor and director of the National Bank of Egypt.