Gerald Ratzer was born in England in 1942. He graduated from Glasgow University in 1963 and went on to do a Post Graduate diploma in Numerical Analysis and Computing at Cambridge University. He came to Canada in 1964 as McGill University's first graduate student in computer science and graduated with a M.Sc. in Computer Science in 1966. He was appointed as an assistant professor in 1966 at McGill and became a founding member of the School of Computer Science in 1970. He became an associate professor in 1973 and a full professor in 1998. He served as Faculty representative to the Senate in 1995 and was the chair or member of various committees in Senate, the Faculty of Engineering and Graduate faculty related to computers. He was the chief executive officer of McGill Systems Inc. (MSI). MSI sought software projects from the University that could be commercially developed.

He won several awards including NSERC and Conference Board of Canada Synergy Award and the Royal Bank Teaching Innovation Award. In 1987 he received a CIDA Grant for a Computer Assisted Learning program at the University of Zimbabwe and in 1993 a $1.2 million Precarn PERK team grant on the Parallel Procession of Spatial Data involving ATS, DREV and CRIM. He consulted in air traffic control simulation, computer assisted learning software, and systems analysis. His chief projects were air traffic control models for ATS Aerospace of St. Bruno, Quebec (1980-1998), and NAV Canada of Ottawa (1998) as well as software development for Hydro Quebec (Symbl project) to locate telecommunication facilities using the production of software named RadioCAD.

He produced more than 20 papers and the following books, A FORTRAN Course, 1975; FORTRAN 77 Course, 1979, 1986; Micros to SuperMicros: An Overview, 1986; FORTRAN 90 and Algorithms, 1995; and FORTRAN 90, C and Algorithms, 1996, 2002.

Ratzer taught courses on computer languages and operating systems, computers in engineering and microcomputers.

Francis Mawson Rattenbury was born in Leeds, England in 1867. He began training as an architect in 1885 in his uncles' firm Mawson and Mawson. He immigrated to British Columbia in 1892, settling first in Vancouver, then moving to Victoria the next year when he won the competition for the design of the new Parliament Buildings. This coup launched a two-decades-long string of successes which included Government House, court houses, banks, hotels, and residences. He also pursued business careers in inland shipping and land speculation. His reign as British Columbia’s most exalted architect ended with a return to England in 1929, where his career collapsed in the shadow of marital scandal, financial ruin and, finally, death by murder.

Richard Rathbun was born on January 25, 1852, in Buffalo, Erie County, New York.

He was an American naturalist. While attending Cornell University, he became an assistant in zoology at the Boston Society of Natural History in 1873. In 1874 and 1875, he spent the summer assisting the U.S. Fish Commission, a division of the Smithsonian Institution. He was appointed the official geologist of an expedition to Brazil to investigate its natural resources. In 1876, he was appointed scientific assistant in the U.S. Fish Commission, a position he held for eighteen years. In 1880, he became curator of marine invertebrates at the Smithsonian Institute in Washington, D.C. In 1896, he was made assistant secretary, and in 1898, the director of the Smithsonian. In 1902, he became president of the Washington Philosophical Society, and in 1905, president of the Cosmos Club. He was also a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science and a member of the Fisheries Society of Finland, the Russian Imperial Society for the Acclimatization of Animals and Plants, the Zoological Society of London, the International Zoological Congress, the International Congress of Applied Chemistry, the Pan American Scientific Congress, and others. He was granted honorary degrees by the University of Indiana, Bowdoin College, Pittsburgh University, and George Washington University. Rathbun was instrumental in the establishment of the natural history building of the Smithsonian Institution.

In 1880, he married Carolyn (Lena) Augusta Hume (1851–1922). He died on July 16, 1918, in Washington, D.C.