Charles Francis Adams Jr. was born on May 27, 1835, in Boston, Massachusetts, into a family with a long legacy in American public life (Father Charles Francis Adams Sr. (1807-1886).

He was an American author, historian, railroad and park commissioner, and philanthropist. He graduated from Harvard University in 1856 and then studied law in the office of Richard Henry Dana Jr. and was admitted to the bar in 1858. In 1895, he received an LL.D. degree from Harvard University. Adams served in the Union Army during the American Civil War. In 1866, President Andrew Johnson nominated Colonel Adams for the award of the rank of brevet (honorary) brigadier general, United States Volunteers. He served as the president of the Union Pacific Railroad from 1884 to 1890. He was elected a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1871 and a member of the American Antiquarian Society in 1891. After 1874, he devoted much of his time to the study of American history and became vice president of the Massachusetts Historical Society in 1890 and its president in 1895. He was also elected President of the American Historical Association in 1901. From 1893 to 1895, Adams was chairman of the Massachusetts Park Commission.

In 1865, he married Mary Hone Ogden (1843-1935). He died on March 20, 1915, in Washington, D.C.

Charles Kendall Adams was born on January 24, 1835, in Derby, Vermont.

He was an American educator and historian. He had only an elementary school education until he was 21 years old. He worked his way through the University of Michigan, where he studied with Andrew Dickson White. He taught history at the University of Michigan until his appointment in 1885 as president of Cornell University. As a result of major conflicts over honourary degrees and control of faculty appointments, Adams was forced to resign as Cornell president in 1892. He subsequently became president of the University of Wisconsin, a position he held until his death in 1902. In 1887, he was elected a member of the American Antiquarian Society. In 1890, he became president of the American Historical Association.

In 1863, he married Abigail Disbrow. He died on July 26, 1902, in Redlands, California.

The geologist Frank Dawson Adams was born in Montréal. A brief period of employment with a pharmacist stirred an interest in chemistry which brought him to McGill, where he studied geology, chemistry and metallurgy. He graduated in 1878, and in 1880 joined the staff of the Geological Survey of Canada as chemist and petrographer. From there he went to Heidelberg, where he earned his Ph.D., and Zurich to study a revolutionary petrographic technique: examining mineral slices in slides under a polarization microscope. Microscopy was particularly useful for deciphering metamorphism in rocks, which in turn contributed to the detection and description of ore deposits. In 1889, Adams was appointed lecturer at McGill, and five years later succeeded Dawson as Logan Professor of Geology. He was Acting Principal, 1919-1920, and Vice-Principal from 1920 to 1924 when he retired. Throughout this period, he was an active researcher producing pioneering studies of the Upper Laurentian region, Pre-Cambrian rocks of the Grenville series, the Monteregian archipelago, but particularly on the deformation or flow of rocks. Adams served as President of the Royal Society of Canada (1913) and the Geological Society of America (1918). After his retirement he travelled extensively, published a history of geology (1938) and cultivated his library of early printed books on geology. He was an Anglican, and wrote a history of Christ Church Cathedral, Montréal.

Julius Walker Adams was born on October 18, 1812, in Boston, Massachusetts.

He was an American civil engineer and railroad engineer. Adams was the second cousin of President John Quincy Adams. In 1830, he entered the United States Military Academy, where he studied for two years, but resigned to start working as an engineer for his uncle George Washington Whistler. From 1832 to 1844, he acted as assistant engineer on the Providence and Stonington Railroad and the Paterson and Hudson River Railroad. In 1856, he switched from railroad engineering to designing. He supervised the first large-scale urban sewerage and drainage system in the United States for Brooklyn, New York (1857-1860) and became an engineer for New Haven's water works. During the Civil War, he became a colonel of engineers and of the 67th New York Volunteers while serving in the Army of the Potomac (1861-1863). Wounded in the 1862 Battle of Seven Pines in Virginia, he resigned and returned to Brooklyn, where he was a consulting engineer in New York City. From 1869 to 1878, he served as chief engineer of the Brooklyn Board of City Works, and from 1878 to 1889, a consulting engineer of the board of public works of New York City. He co-founded the American Society of Civil Engineers in 1852 and served as its president from 1874 to 1875. Adams was an editor of the Engineering News (1881-1882) and became a member of the American Academy for the Advancement of Science and of the New York Academy of Science.

In 1835, he married Elizabeth Denison (1812-1888). He died on December 13, 1899, in Brooklyn, New York.

John Adams was born on February 15, 1947, in Worcester, Massachusetts.

He is an American composer and conductor. He grew up in Vermont and New Hampshire and received his early musical training from his father, with whom he studied clarinet and played in local marching bands. In 1971, having graduated from Harvard, where he studied with Leon Kirchner, Adams left New England for California, where he has lived ever since in the San Francisco Bay Area. Adams taught at the San Francisco Conservatory of Music for a decade and, from 1978 to 1985, worked closely with the San Francisco Symphony, where conductor Edo de Waart became the first to champion his work. In the 1970s and 80s, Adams’ music played a decisive part in the creation and spread of a post-modern current within the contemporary art music tradition. In 1985, he began collaborating with Alice Goodman and Peter Sellars, producing two of the world’s most frequently performed operas of the past decades: Nixon in China (1984-1985) and The Death of Klinghoffer (1990-1991). This latter work was adapted for film by Penny Woolcock in 2003. His collaboration with Peter Sellars continued with the “song play” I Was Looking at the Ceiling and Then I Saw the Sky (1995); El Niño (1999-2000), an opera-oratorio whose multilingual libretto is a celebration of the turn of the millennium, and Doctor Atomic in 2005. In 2006, A Flowering Tree, an opera inspired by Mozart’s Magic Flute, premiered in Vienna. Their collaboration continued with an oratorio The Gospel According to the Other Mary (2012) and Girls of the Golden West, an opera about the Gold Rush, which premiered at the San Francisco Opera in 2017. Adams is also a conductor and has conducted the Houston Symphony, the Toronto Symphony, the Los Angeles Philharmonic, and the New World Symphony. Adams is the recipient of numerous prizes: e.g., the California Governor’s Prize for Lifetime Achievement in the Arts (2000), Pulitzer Prize in Music for On the Transmigration of Souls (2003), 3 Grammies for “Best Classical Recording,” “Best Orchestral Performance,” and “Best Classical Contemporary Composition” for the 10-CD collection The John Adams Earbox from Nonesuch Records (2003), Michael Ludwig Nemmers Prize in Music Composition (2004), Harvard Arts Medal (2007), Honorary doctorate from Harvard University( 2012), Honorary Doctorate from Yale University (2013), Honorary Doctorate from the Royal Academy of Music (London) (2015) and Erasmus Prize (2019).

Raymond S. Adams was born in 1938 in the British Crown Dependency of Jersey. He is a songwriter, best known for the hit song Dance On!, which was first recorded by the Shadows in 1962. The song was also recorded by Petula Clark in English, French and Italian versions.

“Ritchie Adams” was the stage name of New York-born singer and songwriter Richard Adam Ziegler. He began as the lead vocalist with a group called the “Fireflies” in 1959. The group made a hit album “You Were Mine,” and another, “I Can’t Say Goodbye,” made it to the charts. On the whole, however, his singing career was not successful. He did better as a songwriter during the 60s and 70s, writing some 375 songs: among these were two big hits, “Tossin’ and Turnin’” for Bobby Lewis and “After the Lovin’” for Engelbert Humperdink. He also wrote many top-forty hits. Later he worked for television. He was music director for the children’s television show Banana Splits. He is credited with composing 18 soundtracks, mainly for television. He died at the age of 78 after a long illness.

Robert Chamblet Adams was born on December 1, 1839, in Boston, Massachusetts.

He was the president of the Pioneer Free Thought Club in Montreal and the Canadian Secular Union. He captained sailing ships and have sailed around the world. He conducted a shipping and commission business in Montreal, which he gave up in 1882 when he became involved in phosphate and other mining concerns. Adams, inspired perhaps by his association with the Free Thought Club and the Canadian Secular Union, wrote several books, e.g., "The Pithy Creed of Rationalism."

In 1871, he married Mary Emily Job (1842–1944). He died on August 10, 1902, in Sedgwick, Maine.

Rev. Dr. Thomas Adams was born on September 14, 1847, in Parramatta, New South Wales, Australia.

He studied at Wesleyan Collegiate Institution (now Queen's College), University College, London, and in 1876, he graduated with an M.A. degree from St. John's College, Cambridge. He became an Assistant Master at the Royal Grammar School, Lancaster (1873-1875) and at St. Peter's School, York (1874-1883). In 1883, he became a Headmaster of Gateshead High School and in 1885, he was appointed 3rd Principal of the University of Bishop's College, Lennoxville, Quebec (1885-1899). He was portrayed as a fine scholar and a forceful personality. In 1886, he helped establish the first University Faculty of Music in Quebec, the second in the entire Dominion of Canada. The same year, he received an honorary degree of D.C.L. from the University. Adams worked strenuously to obtain funds for the rebuilding of the school buildings, partially destroyed by fire in 1891.

In 1878, he married Annie Stanley Barnes (1855–1931). He died on December 24, 1902, in Eardisley, Herefordshire County, England.

Rev. William Adams was born on January 25, 1807, in Colchester, Connecticut.

He was a Presbyterian minister and pastoral theologian. He attended Phillips Academy (where his father, John Adams (1772-1863), was the principal), followed by Yale College (1823-1827) and Andover Theological Seminary (1827-1830). He served as the pastor of the Congregational Church in Brighton, Massachusetts (1831-1834), the Central Presbyterian Church (1834-1853), which moved into a new building and became the Madison Square Presbyterian Church (1853-1874) in New York City. He was a founder as well as the first president of the Union Theological Seminary (1874) in New York City. He was also its professor of Sacred Rhetoric until his death in 1880.

In 1831, he married Susan Patton Magoun (d. 1834). In 1836, he remarried her sister Martha Bradshaw Magoun. He died on August 31, 1880, in Orange Mountain, New Jersey.