Bernard Mandeville, or Bernard de Mandeville (15 November 1670, Rotterdam – 21 January 1733, Hackney), was a philosopher, political economist and satirist. Born in the Netherlands, he lived most of his life in England and used English for most of his published works. He became famous for The Fable of the Bees.

Mandeville was born on 15 November 1670, at Rotterdam in the Netherlands, where his father was a prominent physician. On leaving the Erasmus school at Rotterdam he showed his ability by an Oratio scholastica de medicina (1685), and at Leiden University in 1689 he produced the thesis De brutorum operationibus, in which he advocated the Cartesian theory of automatism among animals. In 1691 he took his medical degree, pronouncing an inaugural disputation, De chylosi vitiata. He moved to England to learn the language, and succeeded so remarkably that many refused to believe he was a foreigner. His father had been banished from Rotterdam in 1693 for involvement in the Costerman tax riots on October 5, 1690; Bernard himself may well have been involved.

Adam Smith (baptised 16 June 1723 – 17 July 1790 [OS: 5 June 1723 – 17 July 1790]) was a Scottish social philosopher and a pioneer of political economy. One of the key figures of the Scottish Enlightenment, Smith is the author of The Principles Which Lead and Direct Philosophical Enquiries, Illustrated by the History of Astronomy, prior to 1758, The Theory of Moral Sentiments, 1759, and An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations, 1776. The latter, usually abbreviated as The Wealth of Nations, is considered his magnum opus and the first modern work of economics. It earned him an enormous reputation and would become one of the most influential works ever published. Smith is widely cited as the father of modern economics and capitalism and is still among the most influential thinkers in the field of economics today. In 2009, Smith was named among the 'Greatest Scots' of all time, in a vote run by Scottish television channel STV.

Smith studied social philosophy at the University of Glasgow and at Balliol College in the University of Oxford, where he was one of the first students to benefit from scholarships set up by his fellow Glaswegian John Snell. After graduating, he delivered a successful series of public lectures at Edinburgh, leading him to collaborate with David Hume during the Scottish Enlightenment. Smith obtained a professorship at Glasgow teaching moral philosophy, and during this time he wrote and published The Theory of Moral Sentiments. In his later life, he took a tutoring position that allowed him to travel throughout Europe, where he met other intellectual leaders of his day. Smith then returned home and spent the next ten years writing The Wealth of Nations, publishing it in 1776. He died in 1790 at the age of 67.

Johannes "Joop" Adrianus van den Ende (born 23 February 1942) is a Dutch media tycoon, theatrical producer, co-founder of Endemol and founder/owner of Stage Entertainment.

Joop van den Ende (Amsterdam 1942) has produced many plays, musicals, revues, films and television programmes over the last 35 years. In 1969 he started his career as an independent theatre and television producer. Under his guidance, a new musical tradition developed in the Netherlands. Hundreds of television productions were created in his own studio complex in Aalsmeer.

In 1993 Van den Ende and his competitor John de Mol created television production company Endemol, combining the efforts of their respective TV companies. Endemol is the producer of popular TV formats such as Big Brother and is active in 25 countries on five continents.

Endemol was listed on the stock exchange in 1996 and was sold to the Spanish telecom giant Telefónica in 2000 for €5.5bn. (In 2007 Endemol was sold on to a consortium including Silvio Berlusconi, the former prime minister of Italy, as well as John de Mol, in a deal valued at €2.6bn).

Paul Jorion is by training an anthropologist, sociologist with a special interest in the cognitive sciences. He has also written seven books on capitalist economics.

Paul was born and raised in Belgium, and has been a Professor at the universities of Brussels, Cambridge, Paris VIII and University of California at Irvine. He was a Visiting Scholar of the "Human Complex Systems" Program at UCLA from 2005 to 2009. He currently lives in France where he runs a popular blog on financial and economic matters.

A student of Claude Lévi-Strauss and of French mathematician Georges-Théodule Guilbaud in modeling kinship systems with algebraic models, Jorion has made several contributions to the field, solving in particular the marriage pattern of the Pende of the Congo (in collaboration with Gisèle de Meur and Trudeke Vuyk), reconciling also conflicting interpretations of the kinship system of the Australian Murngin (from research done jointly with Edmund Leach, his teacher at Cambridge University). Collaborating with Douglas R. White he has published several papers in the formalization of kinship algebra.