Alexander Gavrilovich Gurwitsch (or Gurvich) was born on September 26, 1874 in the Ukraine. He graduated from Munich University in 1897 and then worked in the histology laboratories at the universities of Strasbourgh and Bern, where he met his future wife, Lydia Felicine. He was the first to observe biophotons and developed morphogenetic field theory. Gurwitsch was professor of histology and embryology at Moscow University from 1924 to 1929 until a falling out with the Communist Party forced him to give up the position. He moved on to direct a laboratory in Leningrad until 1945 and then became director of the Institute of Experimental Biology in Leningrad until 1948. He then retired and died on July 27, 1954 in Moscow.

Hermann Joseph Muller was born on December 21, 1890 in New York City. He entered Columbia College at age sixteen and graduated in 1910. He received his Ph.D. in 1914 and accepted a position to teach biology at the William Marsh Rice Institute (now Rice University). He was interested in genetics and discovered the phenomenon of x-ray mutagenesis, for which he received the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1946. He married his first wife, Jessie M. Jacobs, in 1923, and they had one son, David. Muller married his second wife, Dorothea Kantorowicz, in 1939, and they had one daughter, Helen Juliette. He passed away on April 5, 1967.