Kiyotsugu Hirayama was born on October 13, 1874 at Sendai, which has been the largest city in the north-east district of Japan. He was educated there up to the age of 20. He studied foreign languages and basic science as well as classical Chinese which intellectual Japanese should have mastered. He left Sendai to enter the University of Tokyo in 1894. He succeeded in the entrance examination, majored astronomy and graduated it in 1897.

Edwin Brant Frost II (July 16, 1866 – May 14, 1935) was an American astronomer.

He was born in Brattleboro, Vermont. His father, Carlton Pennington Frost, was dean of Dartmouth Medical School.

Frost graduated from Dartmouth in 1886. He continued his education as a post-graduate student in chemistry and in 1887 became an instructor in physics while only 21 years old. In 1890 Frost went abroad to Europe and ended up researching stellar spectroscopy under Hermann Vogel in Potsdam. He returned to Dartmouth in 1892 as an assistant professor of astronomy.

The Reverend Thomas Henry Espinell Compton Espin or T. H. E. C. Espin (28 May 1858 – 2 December 1934) was a British astronomer. His father Thomas Espin was Chancellor of the Diocese of Chester and his mother was Elizabeth (née Jessop).

He became interested in astronomy after the appearance of "Coggia's Comet" (C/1874 H1).

William Frederick Denning, FRAS (25 November 1848 – 9 June 1931) was a British astronomer who achieved considerable success without formal scientific training.

Denning devoted a great deal of time to searching for comets, and discovered several including the periodic comet 72P/Denning-Fujikawa and the lost comet D/1894 F1. The latter was the last comet discovered on British soil until the discoveries of George Alcock.

William Wallace Campbell (11 April 1862 – 14 June 1938) was an American astronomer, and director of Lick Observatory from 1900 to 1930. He specialized in spectroscopy.

He was born on a farm in Hancock county, Ohio, the son of Robert Wilson and Harriet Welsh Campbell. After a few years of local schooling he entered in 1882 the University of Michigan to study civil engineering, graduating Bachelor of Science in 1886. Whilst at university he developed his interest in astronomy when he read Simon Newcomb's Popular Astronomy.

Sherburne Wesley Burnham (December 12, 1838 – March 11, 1921) was an American astronomer. His parents were Roswell O. and Marinda (née Foote) Burnham.

He worked at Yerkes Observatory. All his working life, he served during the day as a court reporter and was an amateur astronomer, except for four years as a full-time astronomer at Lick Observatory.