Robert Ellis Thompson was born on April 5, 1844, in Lurgan, County Armagh, Northern Ireland.

He was an educator. In 1857, he moved with his family to the United States. He graduated from the University of Pennsylvania (B.A., 1865; M.A., 1868) and began teaching there as an instructor in Latin and mathematics in 1868. In 1871, he was promoted to Assistant Professor of Mathematics. He earned his Ph.D. degree from the Hamilton College, New York, in 1879. He was Professor of Social Science at the University of Pennsylvania (1874-1883) and later became John Welsh Centennial Professor of History and English Literature (1883-1893). Thompson also lectured at Harvard and Yale from 1884 to 1887 and at the Princeton Theological Seminary. He was editor of Penn Monthly (1870-1880) and The American (1881-1892). He published Social Science and National Economy in 1875 and served as editor for the first two volumes of the Encyclopedia Americana, a supplement to the 9th edition of the Encyclopaedia Britannica (1883-1885). In 1887, the University of Pennsylvania awarded him an honorary degree of Doctor of Divinity. He also received an honorary degree of LL.D. from Muhlenberg College in 1909. In 1894, he took over the Presidency of the Central High School in Philadelphia, where he remained until his retirement in 1914. He was an outspoken defender of labour unions (1911) and proponent of female suffrage.

In 1874, he married Mary E. Neely (1845–1894). He died on October 19, 1924, in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.

Reginald Edward Thompson was born in London in 1834. He was educated at Brighton College, at Trinity College, Cambridge, and at St. George’s Hospital. He took the degree of M.B. Cantab. in 1860. In the following year Dr. Thompson accompanied (the then) Viscount Milton on a shooting expedition to the far Canadian North-West.

Katrin A. Partelpoeg arrived as a student at McGill in 1971 and graduated with a B.A. in Industrial Relations in 1975. Later she married Professor John Herd Thompson of the Department of History at McGill University.

John Herd Thompson was born in Winnipeg in 1946. He graduated from the University of Winnipeg with a B.A. in 1968. In 1969 he earned his M.A. from the University of Manitoba and in 1975 he was granted a PhD. from Queen’s University. A specialist in the history of the Canadian Prairies, he joined McGill’s Department of History in 1971 as a Lecturer and rose to the position of Full Professor. From 1990 he was Professor of History at Duke University. John Herd Thompson wrote The Harvest of War: The Prairie West 1914-1918 (1978), Ethnic Minorities during Two World Wars (1991), and co-authored Loyalties in Conflict: Ukrainians in Canada during the Great War (1983) and Canada 1922-1939: Decades of Discord (1985).