Peter Hechtman was an Associate Professor of Molecular Genetics at McGill University. He completed his PhD under the supervision of Charles Scriver. Hechtman was a pioneer researcher on Tay-Sachs disease and was responsible for instigating province-wide genetic screening for the disease. He joined the Medical Group in Medical Genetics in the early 1970s as an expert in molecular and biochemical genetics.

Matthew Forster Heddle was born on April 28, 1828, in Hoy, Orkney, Scotland.

He was a Scottish physician, educator, and mineralogist. He studied medicine at the University of Edinburgh (1845-1851) and he practised in Edinburgh for about 5 years. Then he studied chemistry and mineralogy at Klausthal and Freiburg, Germany. In the 1850s, together with Patrick Dudgeon, he participated in survey expeditions of the Faroe Islands, the Shetland Islands, and the Orkney Islands. In 1876, they co-founded the Mineralogical Society of Great Britain. He became assistant to Prof. Connell, who held the chair of chemistry at St. Andrews, and in 1862, he succeeded him as a professor, a position he held until 1880 when he was invited to report on gold mines in South Africa. On his return, he devoted himself to mineralogy and formed one of the finest personal collections of minerals. His specimens are now in the Royal Scottish Museum at Edinburgh. Heddle contributed many articles on Scottish minerals, and on the geology of the northern parts of Scotland, to the Mineralogical Magazine, as well as to the Transactions of the Royal Society of Edinburgh. In 1876, he was elected a fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh. He was a keen amateur mountaineer and one of the first honorary members of the Scottish Mountaineering Club.

In 1858, he married Mary Jane Sinclair Mackechnie (1831–1891). He died on November 19, 1897, in St Andrews, Scotland.

Oswald Heer was born on August 31, 1809, in Niederuzwil, Switzerland.

He was a Swiss geologist and naturalist. In 1828, he entered the University of Halle, Germany to study theology but he later switched to natural sciences. In 1834, he became privatdozent in botany at the University of Zürich. He founded and was made a director of the Botanical Gardens there in 1835. In 1840, he advanced to associate professor at Zürich and began his studies in paleobotany. In 1845, he founded and became the president of Zürich's Society of Agriculture and Horticulture. He was also a professor of biology and entomology at the University of Zürich (1852-1883). In 1855, he began to teach taxonomic botany at the Technische Hochschule in Zürich. In 1862, Heer was elected as a member of the American Philosophical Society. In 1873, he received the Wollaston Medal from the Geological Society of London. He was the author of several books, e.g., “Flora tertiaria Helvetiae” in 3 vols. (1855-1859), “Flora fossilis arctica” in 7 vols. (1868-1883), “Flora fossilis Helvetiae” (1876), and “Über die nivale Flora der Schweiz” (1883).

In 1838, he married Margaretha Trümpy (1813–1891). He died on September 27, 1883, in Lausanne, Switzerland.