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Harold Walter Bailey was born in Wiltshire but spent much of his childhood in Australia where he self-taught himself many languages. He graduated from the University of Western Australia before taking up a studentship at Oxford University. After graduating with first class honours in 1929, Bailey was appointed as Parsee Community Lecturer in the then London School of Oriental Studies. In 1936 Bailey became Professor of Sanskrit and a Fellow at Queens' College, Cambridge. He retired in 1967. It is believed that he could read more than 50 languages.

Harold Walter Bailey was born in Wiltshire but spent much of his childhood in Australia where he self-taught himself many languages. He graduated from the University of Western Australia before taking up a studentship at Oxford University. After graduating with first class honours in 1929, Bailey was appointed as Parsee Community Lecturer in the then London School of Oriental Studies. In 1936 Bailey became Professor of Sanskrit and a Fellow at Queens' College, Cambridge. He retired in 1967. It is believed that he could read more than 50 languages.

Gerard Clauson was educated at Eton and Oxford becoming a Boden scholar in Sanskrit in 1911, Hall-Houghtman Syriac Prizeman, 1913; and James Mew Arabic Scholar, 1920. He followed a career in the Civil Service which was to culminate in serving as the Assistant Under-Secretary of State in the Colonial Office, 1940-1951. However he was also a skilled linguist and wrote papers on philology. When he died in May 1974, he had been a member of the Royal Asiatic Society for 62 years.

David Hawkes was born in London. He entered Oxford University in 1942 as a student in Christ Church, where he studied the Latin and Greek Classics. After his first year, during the height of the Second World War, Hawkes was recruited to study Japanese in London. His talent for East Asian languages was soon recognized by his military superiors, and he was made an instructor to the Japanese codebreakers. After the war's end in 1945, Hawkes returned to Oxford, where he transferred from Classics into the newly established Honours School of Chinese. Hawkes studied at Oxford until 1947, when he moved to China to continue his studies at Peking University. He left China in 1951 and continued his study at Oxford becoming Oxford's chair of Chinese in 1959. Hawkes formally retired from Chinese scholarship in 1984 and relocated with his wife to Wales, donating his 4,500-volume Chinese book collection to the National Library of Wales. He died in Oxford in 2009.