Stephen Wayne Rodefer was born on November 20, 1940, in Bellaire, Ohio.

He was an American poet, writer, translator, painter, and educator. He graduated from Amherst College (B.A., 1963), SUNY Buffalo (M.A.) and San Francisco State University (M.F.A.). He taught English and creative writing at the University of New Mexico and lectured at various colleges, including San Francisco State University and the University of California at San Diego, where he served as curator of the Archive for New Poetry. Rodefer has published translations of Sappho, Catullus, Lucretius, Dante, Baudelaire, Rilke, Villon, O’Hara, and the Cuban poet Noel Nicola. His graphic work, Language Pictures, has been exhibited in New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, London, Paris, and Prague. He is the author of many books of poetry, prose, plays, and translations, including “Call it Thought: Selected Poems” (2008), “Left Under A Cloud” (2000), “Mon Canard” (2000), “Erasures” (1994), “Leaving” (1992), “Passing Duration” (1991), “Emergency Measures” (1987), and “Four Lectures” (1982). He was one of the original Language poets. Rodefer's papers were purchased by Stanford University and are on permanent view there.

He lived in Paris, France, where he died on August 22, 2015.

Thomas George Roddick was born in Harbour Grace, Newfoundland, and obtained his M.D.,C.M. from McGill in 1868. In the same year he entered the militia; eventually he would be placed in charge of the medical department of the Riel Expedition and would become Canada's first Director of Army Medical Services. After graduating from McGill, Roddick joined the staff of the Montreal General Hospital. In 1874 he was appointed demonstrator in anatomy at McGill and in 1875 Professor of clinical surgery. In 1877 after a period of study with Lister in Edinburgh, Roddick introduced antiseptic surgery into the M.G.H. In 1896 he was returned as federal M.P. for Montreal West and he drafted the legislation which created the Medical Council of Canada in 1911. From 1901 until his retirement in 1908, he served as McGill's Dean of Medicine. He was knighted in 1914.

Amy Redpath, the second wife of Sir Thomas George Roddick, was born in Montréal. She was the daughter of John Redpath, the sugar manufacturer, and niece of Peter Redpath. A poet and writer, she was also a great benefactor of McGill University, particularly through the Peter Whiteford Redpath and Jocelyn Clifford Redpath Library Fund (1911), and her gift, in memory of her husband, of the Roddick Gates (1924).

James Rennell Rodd, 1st Baron Rennell, was born on November 9, 1858, in London, England.

He was a British diplomat, poet, and politician. He was educated at Haileybury College and Balliol College, Oxford, where he won the Newdigate prize for English verse in 1880 with a poem on Sir Walter Raleigh. He entered the British Diplomatic Service in 1883 and served at embassies in Berlin, Athens (1888-1891), Rome (1891), Paris (1892), Zanzibar (1893), Cairo (1894-1891), Rome (1902-1904), and Stockholm (1905-1908). He played an important part in negotiating the Anglo-Ethiopian Treaty of 1897 with Emperor Menelik II of Ethiopia and played an active and neutral part in the Dissolution of the union between Norway and Sweden, for which he was rewarded the Grand Cross of the Order of the Polar Star by King Oscar II. In 1908, he was appointed ambassador to Italy, a post he held until he retired in 1919. He left the Diplomatic Service in 1919 but served on the mission to Egypt in 1920 with Viscount Milner. Rodd was the British delegate to the League of Nations (1921-1923), and he sat as Unionist Member of Parliament for the constituency of St. Marylebone (1928-1932). Apart from his diplomatic services, Rodd was also a published poet and scholar of ancient Greece and Rome. Between 1881 and 1940, he published some twenty volumes, including several collections of poems, e.g., “Ballads of the Fleet” (1897), “Love, Worship and Death” (1916), “Social and Diplomatic Memories” (3 vols., 1922–1925), and “Rome of the Renaissance and of Today” (1932). Rodd was appointed Companion of the Order of the Bath (1897), Knight Commander of the Order of St. Michael and St. George (1899), Knight Grand Cross of the Royal Victorian Order (1905), Knight Grand Cross of the Order of St. Michael and St. George (1915), and Knight Grand Cross of the Order of the Bath (1920). He was appointed to the Privy Council in 1908, and, in 1933, he was raised to the peerage as Baron Rennell, of Rodd in the County of Hereford.

In 1894, he married Lilias Georgina Guthrie (1870–1951). He died on July 26, 1941, in Ardath, Shamley Green, Surrey, England.

Charles Greene Rockwood was born on January 11, 1843, in New York City, New York.

He was an educator, mathematician, seismologist, and vulcanologist. He graduated from Yale University in 1864. He continued his studies in higher mathematics and modern languages and received his Ph.D. in 1866. He was Professor of Mathematics at Bowdoin College (1868-1873), Rutgers (1874-1877), and Princeton University (1877-1905), becoming its Emeritus Professor of Mathematics in 1905. He was interested in seismology, vulcanology, and solar heat and is considered the earliest student in earthquakes in the United States. He published numerous articles concerning his studies of American earthquakes in the American Journal of Science. Rockwood was a member of the American Meteorological Society and served as their first secretary. He was also a member of the National Geographic Society, the U.S. Geological Society, and the New Jersey Historical Society. In 1880, he was ordained a deacon of the First Presbyterian Church in Princeton, a position he held until his death.

In 1867, he married Hettie Hosford Smith (1840–1925). He died on July 2, 1913, in Caldwell, Essex County, New Jersey.