Earl Francis Beach was born on March 13, 1912, in Chicago, Illinois, and died on May 17, 2002, in Waterloo, Ontario. He came to Canada in 1916, received his B.A. in economics in 1934 from Queen’s University, and his M.A. in 1936 and his Ph.D. in 1938 from Harvard University. While a graduate student at Harvard, he became an instructor in Economics. In 1936, Beach became Assistant Professor at City College of New York. He was the director of the McGill School of Commerce from 1940 to 1945, and became Bronfman Professor of Commerce in 1946. From 1946 to 1948, Beach was the chair of the Social Studies and Commerce Group and from 1951 to 1954, was the chair of the Department of Economics and Political Science.

William James Beal was born on March 11, 1833, in Adrian, Lenawee County, Michigan.

He was an American botanist and a pioneer in the development of hybrid corn. He studied at the University of Michigan where he earned his B.A. degree (1859) and his M.A. degree (1865). He received his B.Sc. degree from Harvard University in 1865 and his M.Sc. from the University of Chicago in 1875. Between 1858 and 1861 he was a teacher of Natural Sciences at Friends Academy at Union Springs, New York. In 1871, he became the Head of the Botany Department at the Michigan Agricultural College (now University of Michigan) and stayed in this position for forty years. He led the research using cross-fertilization to increase the yield from 8 rowed Indian corn to 24 rowed hybrid corn. He also founded the W. J. Beal Botanical Garden in 1877, making it the oldest continuously operated botanical garden in the United States.

He died on May 12, 1924, in East Lansing, Ingham County, Michigan.