Robert Palmer Howard (1912-1990) was the son of McGill graduate Dr. Campbell Palmer Howard (1877-1936) and Ottilie Wright (1892-1976). He was the grandson and namesake of distinguished McGill professor and dean of the Faculty of Medicine from 1882-1889, Robert Palmer Howard (1823-1889) and Emily Severs Howard (1840-1892). Howard's father, Campbell Palmer Howard, was the godson of William Osler (1849-1919) and Howard himself was godson to Olser's son, Edward Revere Osler (1895-1917).

Howard received his medical degree from McGill University in 1932. Upon graduation, he worked at McGill and also at Montreal General Hospital. He spent most of his career as a physician and researcher at the Oklahoma Medical Research Foundation, affiliated with the University of Oklahoma. Howard was always particularly interested in the history of medicine and later became the director of University of Oklahoma's History of Medicine Program. Upon retirement, he moved to Iowa City, IA to become Director of the History of Medicine Society at the University of Iowa.

Howard is the author of The Chief: Doctor William Osler published by Science History Publications in 1983. The bibliographical work provides a detailed account of the close relationships and correspondences between the Osler and Howard families. Howard married Muriel Howard and is the father of Caroline Howard Mast.

Henry Marion Howe was born on March 2, 1848, in Boston, Suffolk, Massachusetts.

He was an American metallurgist, educator, and author. He graduated from the Boston Latin School in 1865 and from Harvard College in 1869. In 1871, he graduated from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (B.Sc.). He worked in the iron and then the copper industries in the U.S., Chile, Quebec, New Jersey, and Arizona from 1872 to 1882. From 1883 to 1897, he was a consulting metallurgist in Boston, and simultaneously a lecturer at M.I.T. In 1897, he became a chair in metallurgy at Columbia University. He wrote the books "Copper Smelting" (1885), "The Metallurgy of Steel" (1891), "Iron, Steel, and Other Alloys" (1903), "The Metallography of Steel and Cast Iron" (1916), and the "Iron and Steel" article for the Encyclopædia Britannica, 11th ed. (1911). He received the Bessemer Gold Medal of the Iron and Steel Institute (1895), Elliott Cresson Medal of the Franklin Institute of Philadelphia (1895), and John Fritz Gold Medal of the American Association of Engineering Societies (1917). Howe was elected president of the American Institute of Mining Engineers in 1893, and chairman of the American Society for Testing Materials in 1900. He became a member of the National Research Council in 1918 and its chairman in 1919.

He married Fannie Gay (1851-1926). He died on May 14, 1922, in Bedford Hills, Westchester, New York.

Joseph Howe was born on December 13, 1804, in Halifax, Nova Scotia.

He was a Nova Scotian journalist, politician, public servant, and poet. He attended the Royal Acadian School before beginning an apprenticeship at his father's printing shop. In 1828, he went into the printing business himself with the purchase of the Novascotian, a Halifax newspaper, soon making it into a popular and influential newspaper. He reported extensively on debates in the Nova Scotia House of Assembly and travelled to every part of the province writing about its geography and people. In 1836, he was elected to the assembly as a liberal reformer, beginning a long and eventful public career. He was instrumental in helping Nova Scotia become the first British colony to win responsible government in 1848. In 1854, as the head of a bi-partisan railway commission, he was successful in completing lines from Halifax to Windsor. He served as premier of Nova Scotia from 1860 to 1863 and led the unsuccessful fight against Canadian Confederation from 1866 to 1868. Howe became the 3rd Lieutenant Governor of Nova Scotia in 1873. During his life, he wrote and published some poems related to his appreciation of Nova Scotia and its history. In 1874, a year after his death, his family published a book of his poetry “Poems and Essays”.

In 1828, he married Catherine Susan Ann McNab (1807–1890). He died on June 1, 1873, in Halifax, Nova Scotia.