Lyman Francis was born in Westmount and received his B. Sc. from Sir George Williams College in 1946. He earned his D.D.S. from McGill in 1949, and an M.Sc. in pharmacology in 1958. From 1953 until 1957, Francis served as a demonstrator in Dentistry; he was appointed Assistant Professor in 1958, Associate Professor in 1966, and Professor in 1971. He became Chairman of the Department of Dental Pharmacology and Therapeutics in 1966, and from 1968 to 1974 served as Assistant Dean of Dentistry for graduate studies and research. He also held a number of appointments at the Montreal General Hospital. Francis' major field of research was dental pharmacology, and he was awarded the National Research Council Medal for his original discoveries in the isolation of anti-allergic substance from human tissues. He wrote about thirty scientific papers, as well as a textbook on dental pharmacology. Francis was an amateur artist, gymnast and juggler.

Marguerita (Greta) Francis was born on January 6, 1857, in Prescott, Ontario.

In 1883, she married William George MacNaughton (1853–1924) and they had one daughter and two sons. She died in New York, New York.

Nathaniel A. Francis was an American ornithologist and member of the American Ornithologists' Union (AOU). A resident of Brookline, Massachusetts, he attended the thirty-first stated meeting of the AOU. He is mentioned in historical records of the organization, including in relation to his work on migratory birds and his assertion that the Scarlet Ibis is never to be seen in Texas.

Born in Montreal in 1878, William Willoughby Francis earned his medical degree from Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore in 1902. After interning at Montreal's Royal Victoria Hospital and spending some time in Europe to pursue postgraduate studies, Francis came back to Montreal where he opened a practice in 1906. He later became editor of the Canadian Medical Association Journal, then Registrar of the No.3 Canadian General Hospital in France during the First World War. When his second cousin Sir William Osler died in 1919, he donated his library to McGill University. Francis co-edited the catalogue of Sir William Osler's library, the Bibliotheca Osleriana, and ran the Osler Library of the History of Medicine until his death in 1959.