Charles Doolittle Walcott was born on March 31, 1850, in New York Mills, New York.

He was a paleontologist. He attended various schools in Utica but never completed his formal education. He took his hobby of collecting fossils and turned it into a lucrative career both commercially and scientifically. After meeting Louis Agassiz of Harvard, who encouraged him to pursue the field of paleontology, he began to work as an assistant to James Hall, the State Geologist of New York. In 1879, he was appointed to the newly formed U.S. Geological Survey and rose to become chief paleologist in 1893 and then director in 1894. He was elected to the National Academy of Sciences in 1896. In 1901, he served as president of the Geological Society of America. In 1907, Walcott left the Geological Survey to become the 4th Secretary of the Smithsonian Institution, a position he held until 1927. In 1921, he was awarded the inaugural Mary Clark Thompson Medal from the National Academy of Sciences. He was a member of the American Association for the Advancement of Science and served as its president in 1923. The Charles Doolittle Walcott Medal is awarded by the National Academy every five years to stimulate work in Precambrian and Cambrian paleontology. The Walcott Peak, where he first discovered the Burgess Shale, a fossil-bearing deposit exposed in the Canadian Rockies on Mount Burgess of British Columbia, a UNESCO World Heritage Site, was named after him.

In 1872, he married Lura Ann Rust (1843–1876), in 1888, he remarried Helena B. Stevens (1858–1911), and in 1914, Mary Morris Vaux (1860–1940), an amateur artist and avid naturalist. He died on February 9, 1927, in Washington, D.C.

William McLea Walbank (1856-1909) was born in St. John's, NF; he studied architecture and civil engineering at Queen's University in Ireland, and civil and mechanical engineering at McGill University, where he graduated in 1877. Working in Montreal, Walbank practised as an architect, an engineer and a land surveyor.

William McLea Walbank (1856-1909) est né à St. John's (Terre-Neuve); il a étudié l'architecture et le génie civil à l'Université Queen's en Irlande puis le génie civil et mécanique à l'Université McGill où il a obtenu son diplôme en 1877. À Montréal, Walbank a exercé des fonctions d'architecte, d'ingénieur et d'arpenteur.

William Wainwright was born on April 30, 1840, in Manchester, England.

He was a railway executive. In 1858, he entered the service of the Manchester, Sheffield, and Lincolnshire Railway as a Secretary to the General Manager. In 1862, he moved to Canada to serve as chief clerk in the accountant's office of the Grand Trunk Railway. Over the next fifty-two years, he held many leading offices in Grand Trunk. In 1911, he rose to the position of Senior Vice-President and the Second Vice-President of the Grand Trunk Pacific Railway. Wainwright developed and maintained a thorough understanding of the finance, history, and physical character of the Grand Trunk Railway, often appearing before Parliament in Ottawa on behalf of the company. In conjunction with his duties at the Grand Trunk, he was a director of the Montreal Telegraph Company and vice-president of the Richelieu & Ontario Navigation Company. Wainwright Basin in British Columbia was named in his honour in 1908.

In 1867, he married Rosabella Hilda Arnold (1848–1876), and in 1878, he remarried Mary Emily Arnold (1850–1905). He died on May 14, 1914, in Atlantic City, New Jersey and is buried in Montreal, Quebec.