Robert Fortuine was born in 1934 in Cambridge New York, grew up in Ogunquit Maine, and graduated from Phillips Exeter Academy, New Hampshire in 1952. His father, a retired surgeon died when Fortuine was ten years old, and his mother worked as a visiting nurse and later Head of the Infirmary at Colby College, Waterville Maine. Fortuine attended Cornell University, majoring in German literature with a minor in Classical Greek.

While studying at McGill University, Fortuine was President of the Osler Society, Editor of the McGill Medical Journal, and president of his fourth year class. Following graduation from McGill In 1960, he married Sheila Calder, a Montrealer and nurse at the Royal Victoria Hospital, and took a rotating internship at the Montreal General Hospital.

Fortuine returned to the United States in order to fulfill his draft requirement, and received a commission in the U.S. Public Health Service (in lieu of army service). After two years in North Dakota, he was granted his requested transfer to Alaska, where he remained serving in health services for over 23 years. During a residency in Preventive Medicine from 1967-1970 Fortuine received a M.P.H. (Harvard). From 1977-1980 he served as the United States liaison officer with the World Health Organization in Geneva, Switzerland. Fortuine retired from the Public Health Service in 1987 but continued to work as a volunteer physician one day a week for the next 12 years. His years since retirement have been spent writing on the subject of the history of medicine in the Arctic.

Percy Maxwell Foshay was born on August 19, 1867, in North Andover, Essex, Massachusetts.

He was a physician, insurance agent, and amateur geologist. He graduated from Geneva College, Beaver Falls, Penn. (B.S., 1888; M.S., 1889) and the University of Pennsylvania (M.D., 1891). For several years, he had a private practice in Rochester, N.Y., and Cleveland, Ohio. He served as Secretary of the Cleveland Medical Society and editor of the Cleveland Journal of Medicine. He began his association with life insurance companies in Cleveland and became a medical referee with Mutual Life Insurance. Foshay was transferred to Chicago in 1902 and to New York in 1906, where he worked as a medical examiner and inspector of risks. He was a Fellow of the Geological Society of America.

In 1891, he married Laura Craig Long (1869–1904), and in 1904, he remarried Emily Jane Morgan (1872–1947). He died on January 26, 1939, in Montclair, Essex, New Jersey.

J. S. Foster was a Canadian physicist, born in Nova Scotia. He was educated at Yale University and became an assistant professor at McGill University in 1924, where he taught physics. He became associate professor in 1930. He was made a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada in 1929 and the Royal Society of London in 1935. During the Second World War, he served as a liaison officer for the National Research Council, working at the MIT-run Radiation Laboratory to create a radar antenna now known as the "Foster scanner." He returned to McGill after the war. In 1949, a cyclotron was commissioned at McGill, which Foster oversaw. He served as chairman of the McGill Physics Department from 1952 to 1954.

He returned to McGill in 1944, where he directed the construction of a 100-MeV cyclotron. This instrument was commissioned in 1949. At the time this was the second largest in the world. From 1952 until 1954 he was chairman of the physics department at McGill. He died in Berkeley, California. The John Stuart Foster Radiation Laboratory and Cyclotron at McGill was named after him in 1964.

Lyman Spalding Foster was born on November 25, 1843, in Gloucester, Essex, Massachusetts.

He was an American ornithologist and publisher. He spent the greater part of his life in New York City as a stationer and dealer in natural history books. He was a treasurer of the Linnean Society and publisher of The Auk (1886-1900). Actively interested in ornithology, he contributed papers on birds to The Auk and other publications. His principal contribution to ornithology was a bibliography of the ornithological writings of George N. Lawrence (1806 -1895).

In 1872, he married Elima Stephanie Hallet (1838–1899). He died on January 6, 1904, in New York City, New York.