Sorley MacLean
Sorley MacLean was born at Òsgaig on the island of Raasay on 26 October 1911; Scottish Gaelic was his first language. Before he went to school at the age of six, he spoke very little English. He was the second of five sons born to Malcolm (1880–1951) and Christina MacLean (1886–1974). The family owend a small croft and ran a tailoring business, but they later gave up the croft to move to a better house, which proved detrimental to their finances when the Great Depression took a high toll on the tailoring business. His brothers were John Maclean (1910–1970), a schoolteacher and later rector of Oban High School, who was also a piper; Calum Maclean (1915–1960), a noted folklorist and ethnographer; and Alasdair (1918–1999) and Norman (c.1917–c.1980), who became general practitioners. Sorley's two younger sisters, Isobel and Mary, were also schoolteachers. His patronymic was Somhairle mac Chaluim 'ic Chaluim 'ic Iain 'ic Tharmaid 'ic Iain 'ic Tharmaid; he could not trace his genealogy with certainty to the eighth generation.
Norman McLean
Norman McLean (2 October 186520 August 1947) was a Scottish Semitic and Biblical scholar. He was born on 2 October 1865 at Lanark, the son of the Rev. Daniel McLean (1826–28), missionary to Jamaica and later minister of the UP church at Lanark, and Grace Whyte Millar of Loanhead (1831–1923). He was educated at the Royal High School and the University of Edinburgh, graduating MA in 1885. He entered Christ's College, Cambridge, taking First Class Honours degree in Classics (1889) and in the Semitic Languages Tripos (1893). He took the Prize in Biblical Hebrew. In 1894, he became a Fellow and lecturer of Hebrew in Christ's and then university lecturer in Aramaic (1903–31). He was a Tutor from 1911, and then Master of Christ's from 1927 to 1936. Ill-health forced him to turn down the Vice-Chancellor's post. Responsible for a number of academic works, he spent forty years working on an edition of the Septuagint.