A native of Blantyre, Scotland, Murray came to America in 1902 and was naturalized nine years later. He went to work in a coal mine near Pittsburgh, and by 1912 was serving on the United Mine Workers' international executive board; eight years later he was the vice-president of the International Union, working alongside John L. Lewis. In 1935 he was one of the organizers of the Committee (later Congress) for Industrial Organization, and in 1940 he became its president.

A native of Vermont, the subject worked in Hanover, N.H., and Boston before moving to New York, where he became head of the wholesale house of Morton, Grinnell and Co. in 1855. He became active in Republican party politics in the 1870s and served in Congress from 1878-80. President James Garfield named him minister to France in 1881, and he lived in Paris until 1885. He was elected vice-president on the ticket with Benjamin Harrison in 1888, and from 1895 to 1897 was governor of New York.

Langmuir, a chemist and atomic scientist, was born in Brooklyn and received his A.B. degree from Columbia College in 1903. He was awarded a Ph.D. by the University of Göttingen in 1909 and thereafter joined the research staff of General Electric Co. in Schenectady, New York. In 1932 he was made director of the research laboratory there, and in the same year was the recipient of the Nobel Prize in Chemistry.