Colonel William Henry Sykes, FRS was an English naturalist who served with the British military in India and was specifically known for his work with the Indian Army as a politician, Indologist and ornithologist. One of the pioneers of the Victorian statistical movement, a founder of the Royal Statistical Society, he conducted surveys and examined the efficiency of army operation. Returning from service in India, he became a director of the East India Company and a member of parliament representing Aberdeen.
The Rev. Archibald Henry Sayce, was a pioneer British Assyriologist and linguist, who held a chair as Professor of Assyriology at the University of Oxford from 1891 to 1919. He was able to write in at least twenty ancient and modern languages, and was known for his emphasis on the importance of archaeological and monumental evidence in linguistic research. He was a contributor to articles in the 9th, 10th and 11th editions of the Encyclopædia Britannica.
The Royal Asiatic Society of Great Britain and Ireland, commonly known as the Royal Asiatic Society (RAS), was established, according to its royal charter of 11 August 1824, to further "the investigation of subjects connected with and for the encouragement of science, literature and the arts in relation to Asia." From its incorporation the society has been a forum, through lectures, its journal, and other publications, for scholarship relating to Asian culture and society of the highest level. It is the United Kingdom's senior learned society in the field of Asian studies. Fellows of the society are elected regularly. Fellows include highly accomplished and notable scholars of Asian studies. They use the post-nominal letters FRAS.
Nathaniel Wolff Wallich FRS FRSE was a surgeon and botanist of Danish origin who worked in India, initially in the Danish settlement near Calcutta and later for the Danish East India Company and the British East India Company. He was involved in the early development of the Calcutta Botanical Garden, describing many new plant species and developing a large herbarium collection which was distributed to collections in Europe. Several of the plants that he collected were named after him.
Sir Henry Dudley Gresham Leveson Gower was an English cricketer from the Leveson-Gower family. He played first-class cricket for Oxford University and Surrey and captained England in Test cricket. His school nickname "Shrimp" remained with him through his life, but few cricket sources refer to him by anything other than his initials. He was a selector for the England cricket team, and a cricketing knight.
Sir Charles James Lyall (1845–1920) was an Arabic scholar, and English civil servant working in India during the period of the British Raj.
Nora Elisabeth Mary Boyce was a British scholar of Iranian languages, and an authority on Zoroastrianism. The Royal Asiatic Society's annual Boyce Prize for outstanding contributions to the study of religion is named after her.
William Randolph I was an English American colonist, landowner, planter, merchant, and politician who played an important role in the history and government of the English colony of Virginia. He moved to Virginia sometime between 1669 and 1673, and married Mary Isham a few years later. His descendants include many prominent individuals including Thomas Jefferson, John Marshall, Paschal Beverly Randolph, Robert E. Lee, Peyton Randolph, Edmund Randolph, John Randolph of Roanoke, George W. Randolph, and Edmund Ruffin. Due to his and Mary's many progeny and marital alliances, they have been referred to as "the Adam and Eve of Virginia".
John Robert Morrison was a British interpreter and colonial official in China. Born in Macau, his father was Robert Morrison, the first Protestant missionary in China. After his father's death in 1834, Morrison replaced him as Chinese Secretary and Interpreter to the Superintendents of British Trade in China. In 1843, he was appointed as Acting Colonial Secretary of Hong Kong and a member of the Executive and Legislative Councils, but died eight days later in Hong Kong from fever.
Edward Byles Cowell, was a noted translator of Persian poetry and the first professor of Sanskrit at Cambridge University.
Sir George Abraham Grierson was an Irish administrator and linguist in British India. He worked in the Indian Civil Services but an interest in philology and linguistics led him to pursue studies in the languages and folklore of India during his postings in Bengal and Bihar. He published numerous studies in the journals of learned societies and wrote several books during his administrative career but proposed a formal linguistic survey at the Oriental Congress in 1886 at Vienna. The Congress recommended the idea to the British Government and he was appointed superintendent of the newly created Linguistic Survey of India in 1898. He continued the work until 1928, surveying people across the British Indian territory, documenting spoken languages, recording voices, written forms and was responsible in documenting information on 179 languages, defined by him through a test of mutual unintelligibility, and 544 dialects which he placed in five language families. He published the findings of the Linguistic Survey in a series that consisted of 19 volumes.
Edward Hull was an Irish geologist and stratigrapher who held the position of Director of the Geological Survey of Ireland. He was also a professor of geology in the Royal College of Science, Dublin. His dates are listed in the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography.
Frederick William Thomas, usually cited as F. W. Thomas, was an English Indologist and Tibetologist.
Vincent Arthur Smith, CIE, (1843–1920) was an Irish Indologist and art historian.
John Faithfull Fleet C.I.E was an English civil servant with the Indian Civil Services and became known as a historian, epigraphist and linguist. His research in Indian epigraphy and history, conducted in India over a thirty-year period, is published in books including Pali, Sanskrit and Old Canarese Inscriptions, The Dynasties of the Kanarese Districts of The Bombay Presidency from the earliest historical times to the Musalman Conquest, and The Inscriptions of The Early Gupta Kings and their Successors. He was a regular contributor to works journals covering Indian history. His published well-regarded works on inscriptions in the Sanskrit, Pali and Kannada languages and on the history of dynasties such as the Guptas, Kadambas, Aulikaras, Chalukyas, Rashtrakutas and Seunas.
Sir Whitelaw Ainslie FRSE was a British surgeon and writer on materia medica, best known for his work as a surgeon in the employment of the East India Company in India. He published the first major English work on the medicinal plants of India in 1813.
Charles Savile Roundell was an English cricketer, lawyer and Liberal politician who sat in the House of Commons in two periods between 1880 and 1895.
John George Taylor was a British official of the Foreign Office, and also an important early archaeologist investigating the antiquities of the Middle East. He was one of the first archaeologists to explore the prominent burial mounds in the area of the Persian Gulf, and he made some very important discoveries. He also worked for the British East India Company.
Robert Walpole (1781–1856) was an English classical scholar.
Charles Peter Layard, F.R.S., D.D. was Dean of Bristol from 1800 until his death.
