Jean-Pierre Jossua was born in 1930 to Jewish parents from Salonica. After living in Argentina and Nice, and having been a civil servant, he became a Christian when he entered the Dominican order. According to his biographer P. Charles Chauvin, the forty years of Jossua’s adult life can be divided in two stages: twenty years of teaching and twenty years of writing. For Jossua, Chauvin writes, transcendence is at the same time a confidence in and a transgression of language (Chauvin, Une Vie, 2001).

Thomas Malcolm Knox was born on 28 November 1900 in Birkenhead, Cheshire, to Isabella Marshal and John Knox, a congregational minister. He was educated at Bury Grammar School and the Liverpool Institute, and received a scholarship to Pembroke College, Oxford, where he achieved a first in literae humaniores.

Oskar Kraus was born in Prague on 24 July 1872. After attending the German State School (Staatsgymnasium) Kraus began studying the philosophy of law at Prague in 1890. His philosophical teachers were Anton Marty and Friedrich Jodl. It was through Marty that Kraus first fell under the significant intellectual influence of Franz Brentano whom he met for the first time in 1893. Graduating from Prague in 1895 Kraus sought a career at the Finanzprokuratur in 1896. In 1902 he earned completed his habilitationsschrift on ‘The Theory of Value: A Benthem Study’.

The philosopher John Laird was born at Durris Kincardineshire on 17 May 1887. His father Rev. D. M. W. Laird was a third-generation Church of Scotland minister and his mother Margaret Laird (née Steward) was the daughter of the local schoolmaster John Steward. Of their several children John was the eldest.

Many of the early Gifford lecturers had broad interests; Rodolfo Lanciani’s went deep. Rome was his passion and cartographical archaeology his life. Born in Rome sometime from 1845-1847, Lanciani was trained as an engineer in either Rome or Montecello. By the age of twenty, he was already working as an archaeologist.

Christina Jessy Larner, Senior Lecturer in Sociology at the University of Glasgow, Scotland, was born on 22 September 1933, in northwest London, eldest of five children born to John and Nella (née Wallace) MacDonald Ross. Her father, a Senior Civil Servant in the Home Office and a Presbyterian Lay Preacher, had read Greats at Oxford. Her mother had read history at London University.

Hywel David Lewis was born in Llandudno, Wales in 1910 and passed away in 1992. His education occurred at the University College of North Wales, where he graduated with a first-class degree in philosophy in 1932 and continued on at Jesus College Oxford to receive a BLitt in 1935. He was professor of philosophy at the University College of North Wales from 1947 to 1955 and thereafter professor of the history and philosophy of religion in the University of London King’s College from 1955 to 1977.

Alasdair Chalmers MacIntyre was born 12 January 1929 in Glasgow Scotland to John and Emily (Chalmers) MacIntyre. After he received his education at the University of London and Oxford University, he began his teaching career at Manchester University in 1951. He also taught at Leeds University, Essex University and Oxford University. In 1969 he came to the United States and took a position as professor of the history of ideas at Brandeis University. In 1972 he was appointed dean of the College of Liberal Arts and professor of philosophy at Boston University.

Donald MacKinnon was educated at Cargilfield School Edinburgh (1921–26) Winchester College (1926–31) and New College Oxford (1931–35) where he also held a scholarship and graduated in both Greats and Theology. After Edinburgh MacKinnon became a fellow and tutor at Keble College Oxford (1937–47) and held the Wilde lectureship in Natural and Comparative Religion (1945–47). At the age of thirty-four MacKinnon was appointed to the Regis chair of Moral Philosophy in Aberdeen University (1947–60).