Laurence "Laurie" R. Ricou was born on October 17, 1944, in Brandon, Manitoba.

He is a Canadian writer and educator. He graduated from Brandon College (B.A., 1965) and the University of Toronto (M.A., 1957; Ph.D., 1971). He taught for eight years at the University of Lethbridge, where he became a specialist on Canadian Prairie regionalism and prairie writing. In 1978, he moved to Vancouver and joined the University of British Columbia's Department of English. Ricou became editor of Canadian Literature in 2003. He has written or co-authored several books, including "The Arbutus/Madrone Files: Reading the Pacific Northwest" (2002), "A Field Guide to Dungeness Spit" (1997), "Everyday Magic: Child Languages in Canadian Literature" (1991), and "Vertical Man/Horizontal World: Man and Landscape in Canadian Prairie Fiction" (1973). He has also contributed numerous journal articles, conference papers and chapters for books.

Lajos (Ludwig) Richter was born in 1844 in Tóalmás, Jászberény, Hungary.

He was a Hungarian office worker and amateur botanist and plant collector. He made extensive collections in Algeria, Hungary, Iran, Romania, Slovakia, Switzerland and possessed an immense herbarium. It was purchased by the Hungarian government but its current status is unknown. A large portion was acquired by the Natural History Museum, London, with the Shuttleworth herbarium in 1877.

He died in 1917 in Budapest, Hungary.