Two Hong Kong professors will see the fruits of their labour realised today with the release of one of the most ambitious publishing projects in history - the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography.
A total of 50,113 prominent Britons are detailed in the dictionary's 62.5 million words, which can be read online or in 60 printed volumes for GBP7,500 (HK$105,000).
More than 10,000 people spent 12 years compiling the biographies and updating entries in the dictionary's first edition, which was published in 1900.
They were initially led by Oxford history professor Colin Mathew, who died from a heart attack at the age of 58 in 1999, halfway through the GBP25.5 million project.
Researching biographies also took a toll on the head of history at Lingnan University, Barton Starr, and Gillian Bickley, a retired associate professor of English literature at Baptist University.
Professor Starr was asked in June 1995 to write about John Robert Morrison, interpreter for the British before and during the opium war and in the negotiations leading to the Treaty of Nanking.
Almost eight years later, he signed off on the final proofs of a 700-word biography of Morrison, who was also among Hong Kong's first group of legislative and executive councillors.