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Daniel John Gogerly (1792-1862) was a British Wesleyan Methodist missionary, who served in Sri Lanka from 1818, never returning to England. He was one of the first British translators of the Pāli texts into English, and the greater part of his time was spent in research work in the literature of Ceylon Buddhism. His aim was to accurately portray Buddhism, but he also used his translations to highlight differences between Buddhism and Christianity in furtherance of his missionary agenda. Overall, Gogerly is important not only because his translations were so early but also because the differing factors that conditioned them underscore the complexity within any study of orientalist representations of Buddhism.

After passing several years in general studies, and particularly in earnest preparation for the ministry, he proceeded to Ceylon in 1818, to take charge of the Wesleyan Mission Press at Colombo. From the time of his arrival, he engaged in the study of the vernacular tongues, and was one of the first missionaries who preached extemporaneously in the Sinhalese language. While at Negombo, where he was stationed from 1822 to 1834, he began the study of Pali.

His principal publications consist in essays and translations contributed to the pages of various local periodicals and the Journal of the Ceylon Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society, of which he became in succession secretary, vice-president, and president. These papers are of value to researchers, as records of ancient Pali treatises, of which neither translations nor printed editions existed before Gogerly. His 'Dictionary of the Pali language' could be considered his greatest literary work. He had begun to compile it while at Mathura, and continued adding to it constantly as his reading became more extensive, so that at the time of his death it contained 15,000 words.

Gogerly died at the Wesleyan Mission House, Colpetty, near Colombo, in 1862.

Edward Conze, was born Eberhard Julius Dietrich Conze, in London in 1904 while he father was a German Vice Consul. He studied in Tübingen, Heidelberg, Kiel, Cologne and Hamburg. In 1928 he published his dissertation, "Der Begriff der Metaphysik bei Franciscu Suarez", and was awarded a doctorate in philosophy from Cologne University. He continued post-graduate research in Germany but being a member of the Communist Party he fled to England when the Nazis came to power in 1933.
He continued to lecture on philosophy and psychology but also became interested in Buddhism. In the 1940s he moved to Oxford where he began to work on Sanskrit texts from the Prajñāpāramitā tradition and continued to work on Buddhist texts for the rest of his life.
In 1979, Conze self-published two volumes of memoirs entitled Memoirs of a Modern Gnostic. Conze produced a third volume which contained material considered to be too inflammatory or libellous to be published while the subjects were alive. No copy of the third volume is known to exist.