Frederick Augustus Porter Barnard was born on May 5, 1809, in Sheffield, Massachusetts.

He was a deaf American scientist and educator. In 1828, he graduated from Yale University where he became a tutor. As he began to lose his hearing due to a hereditary condition, he became a teacher in the American Asylum for the Deaf and Dumb at Hartford, Connecticut (1831–1832), and a teacher in the New York Institute for the Instruction of the Deaf and Dumb (1832–1838). From 1838 to 1854, he was a professor of mathematics, natural philosophy, and chemistry at the University of Alabama and the University of Mississippi, becoming its chancellor in 1856. After the outbreak of the Civil War in 1861, when he sympathized with the North, he resigned and went to Washington. In 1864, he became the tenth president of Columbia College (now Columbia University) in New York City, a position he held until the year before his death. He was also president of the American Association for the Advancement of Science in 1866; a member of the board of experts of the American Bureau of Mines in 1865, and a member of the American Institute in 1872. Barnard strove to have educational privileges extended by the university to women as well as to men, and Barnard College, for women, established immediately after his death, was named in his honour. Barnard Observatory, one of the few buildings at the University of Mississippi to survive the Civil War, is also named in his honour.

He died on April 27, 1889, in New York, New York.

Henry Barnard was born on January 24, 1811, in Hartford, Connecticut.

He was an American lawyer, educationalist, and reformer. In 1830, he graduated from Yale University, and in 1835, he was admitted to the Connecticut bar. In 1837, he was elected to the General Assembly of the Connecticut House of Representatives (Whig party), where he introduced legislation meant to aid the deaf, blind, and "insane." This activism soon brought him to focus on improving public education in America, which he believed was essential to keeping Americans able to self-govern. From 1845 to 1849, he was the first commissioner of public schools in Connecticut, responsible for significant educational progress. In 1845, Barnard established the first Rhode Island Teachers Institute at Smithville Seminary. In 1867, he was appointed the first Commissioner of Education of the United States. He was also an editor of the American Journal of Education, the Connecticut Common School Journal, and the Journal of the Rhode Island Institute of Instruction.

He died on July 5, 1900, in Hartford, Connecticut.

Composer and organist Fred E. Lucy Barnes, also known as “Eddy,” was born and baptised in St. Pancras, London, the son of a well-known professor of music, composer Edwin Barnes. In 1872 he began studies at the Royal Academy of Music and also had lessons with Thomas Helmore, master of the choristers at the Chapel Royal. The same year, at age 14, he became organist at All Saints Church in Norfolk Square, London. In 1876 he moved to the same post in St. Margaret’s Church in Prince’s Square in Liverpool. From there, in 1878 he was hired as organist at Christ Church Cathedral in Montreal, Quebec, and worked there till 1879. He had returned briefly to London in 1878 to marry opera singer Leonora Phillippa Braham who had just won the Royal Academy’s Llewelyn Thomas Gold Medal (and who changed her name to Leonora Lucy Barnes). In addition to his job as organist, he served as conductor for the Montreal Philharmonic Society from 1879 to 1880. While in Montreal, he also continued composing and gave several lectures on musical topics, including one for McGill University’s Somerville series entitled, “On the various forms of musical composition as determined by the great masters, their beauties, uses and abuses.” He spent a season in New York City as assistant organist at Trinity Church, commuting between Montreal and New York every week, but resigned from that post and returned to Montreal full-time in 1880. He was 23 when he shot himself fatally with a revolver that same year, just weeks before his son was born. He is buried at St. John the Evangelist Anglican Church in Montreal. His widow returned to London where she had a successful opera career as principal soprano with the Doyly Carte Opera Company and remarried.

George Nicoll Barnes was born on January 2, 1859, in Dundee City, Scotland.

He was a British trade unionist, politician, and author. He was apprenticed as an engineer and began his political career as Assistant Secretary to the Amalgamated Society of Engineers, London, and then as its General Secretary, 1896-1909. In 1900, Barnes was a delegate at the conference in London, which founded the Labour Representation Committee. In 1893, he joined the Independent Labour Party. Barnes was elected for Glasgow Blackfriars in 1906 and continued to represent the constituency until 1918. He served as Vice Chairman of the Labour Party in the House of Commons, 1908-1910, Chairman, 1910-1911, Minister for Pensions, 1916-1917, and a member without portfolio of the War Cabinet, 1917-1919, representing the interests of organized labour. He resigned from the Labour Party in 1918, when he became the leader of the National Democratic Party and sat for Glasgow Gorbals from 1918 until his retirement in 1922. Barnes had a long and active retirement, continuing to support the International Labour Organization, serving as chairman of the Co-operative Printing Society, and publishing several books, including his autobiography, "From Workshop to War Cabinet" (1923), and "History of the International Labour Office" (1926).

In 1882, he married Jessie Langlands (1853-). He died on April 21, 1940, in London, England.

Howard Barnes was born in Massachusetts, and came to Canada in 1879. After receiving his bachelor's (1893) and D.Sc. degrees (1900) from McGill, he joined the University's Physics Department. In 1908 he succeeded Ernest Rutherford as Macdonald Professor of Physics and in 1919 became chairman of the department. His particular interest was research on icebergs and in reducing ice on the St. Lawrence River. He retired in 1933 and passed away in 1950.