Paul Weiss was born on May 19, 1901 in New York City to Samuel and Emma (Rothschild) Weiss. He never graduated from public school, but he earned a B.S. from City College of New York (1927), followed by an M.A. (1928) and PhD (1929) from Harvard. He married Victoria Brodkin (d. 1953) on October 27, 1928, and they had two children, Judith (1935) and Jonathan (1939). Weiss taught philosophy at Bryn Mawr, Yale, and Catholic University in addition to writing a vast number of books on such topics as metaphysics, philosophy, and sports. He also founded the Metaphysical Society of America (1947). His ongoing reflections on philosophical topics, created from 1955 to 1987, were published in several volumes under the title Philosophy in Process. Paul Weiss died on July 5, 2002.

Robert Schirokauer was born in Berlin, Germany, on January 27, 1910. From 1932 to 1933, Schirokauer worked for the University of Berlin and as a Referendar (Assistant Judge) of the Berlin-Charlottenburg District Court. In 1932, he fled Germany for England under the name Robert Schirokauer Hartman. After leaving Germany, Hartman worked as a photographer in London and Paris before accepting a position as a Representative for Walt Disney Productions in 1934. He went on to work as an Instructor and Assistant Professor at the College of Wooster, Ohio (1945-1948), as an Associate Professor at Ohio State University (1948-1956), and as a Fulbright Professor and Research Professor at the National University of Mexico (1957-1973). Hartman also served as a Visiting Professor at MIT (1956-1957), at Yale University (1966), and at the University of Tennessee (1968-1969) in addition to writing a number of books, including Profit Sharing Manual (1948), The Partnership of Capital and Labor: Theory and Practice of a New Economic System (1958), The Structure of Value & Foundations of Scientific Axiology (1959), and The Knowledge of Good (1965). Hartman married Rita Emanuel in 1936 and the couple had one son, Jan Alfred (d. 2006). Hartman died on September 20, 1973 and is buried near his home in Parque de la Paz Cemetery in Cuernavaca, Mexico.