The second professor, Thomas Hyde, is described by the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography as a "mediocre orientalist",[1] and one history of the university says of the third professor, John Wallis, that "not only did [he] give no lectures for most of his long tenure, but he did nothing to advance knowledge either."[2] Pococke, Joseph White, Sir Hamilton Gibb, and Alfred Beeston have received high praise for their scholarship. David Margoliouth (professor 1889–1937) taught the syllabus for the final examinations in lectures over two years, forcing some students to tackle the more difficult texts in their first year of study. Successive professors had few students until after the Second World War, when numbers increased because of the reputation of the then professor, Gibb, and because some British students became interested in Arabic culture while serving in the Middle East during the war.