Richard Nelson Frye (born January 10, 1920) is an American scholar of Iranic and Central Asian Studies, and Aga Khan Professor Emeritus of Iranian Studies at Harvard University. His professional areas of interest are Iranian philology, and the history of Iran and Central Asia before 1000 CE.

Born in Birmingham, Alabama to a family of immigrants from Sweden, "Freij" has four children, his second marriage being to an Iranian-Assyrian scholar, Dr. Eden Naby, from Urmia, Iran who teaches at Columbia University. He speaks fluent Russian, German, Arabic, Persian, Pashto, French, Uzbek, and Turkish, and has extensive knowledge of Avestan, Pahlavi, Sogdian, and other Iranian languages and dialects, both extinct and current.

Frye first attended the University of Illinois, where he received an BA in history and philosophy in 1939. He received his MA from Harvard University in 1940 and his PhD from Harvard in 1946, in Asiatic history.

Frye served with the Office of Strategic Services during World War II. He was stationed in Afghanistan and traveled extensively in the Middle East, Central Asia, and South Asia.

Eden Naby (born 1942) is an Assyrian cultural historian of Central Asia and the Middle East. She was born in the once important Assyrian village of Golpashan, located outside Urmia in Iran. Eden Naby has conducted research, taught and published on minority issues in countries from Turkey to Tajikistan. Her work on Afghanistan and on the Assyrians stands out in the field of cultural survival. She is married to Richard Frye and they have one son, Nels Frye.

After attending Temple University in 1964 for her undergraduate degree, she served in the Peace Corps in Afghanistan, and after receiving her PhD (1975, Columbia University) she taught in Iran. In 1980 she led a CBS 60 Minutes team for the first ever filming of the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. She was featured in Charlie Wilson's War (2008) with Dan Rather.

Naby has devoted her time since 1979 to establishing endowments at United States universities to promote the preservation of Assyrian archives, publishing, and lectures. While limited in principle, these endowments, especially at Harvard University, lay the basis for the preservation of research materials, especially in diaspora.

Ehsan Yarshater (Persian: احسان يارشاطر‎, born April 3, 1920, Hamadan, Iran) is the founder and director of The Center for Iranian Studies, and Hagop Kevorkian Professor Emeritus of Iranian Studies at Columbia University. He was the first full-time professor of Persian at a U.S. university since World War II.

He is one of the 40 editors of the Encyclopædia Iranica, with articles by 300 authors from various academic institutions. He also edited the third volume of the Cambridge History of Iran, comprising the history of the Seleucid, the Parthians, and the Sassanians, and a volume entitled Persian Literature. He is also an editor of a sixteen-volume series named History of Persian Literature. He has won several International awards for scholarship, including a UNESCO award in 1959, and the Georgio Levi Della Vida Medal for Achievement in Islamic Studies from UCLA in 1991. Lecture series in his name have been instituted at the University of London, and the University of California, Los Angeles, and at the Centre National de Recherche Scientifique in Paris.

Michael George Paul (born April 18, 1945 in Detroit, Michigan) is a former left-handed Major League Baseball pitcher who played from 1968 to 1974 for the Cleveland Indians, Texas Rangers and Chicago Cubs.

Drafted in the 20th round of the 1967 amateur draft out of the University of Arizona by the Indians, Paul had success in the minors and in less than two years was in a big league uniform. In 1967, he spent time with the Reno Silver Sox and Portland Beavers. With the Silver Sox, he went 3–2 with a 1.63 ERA. In 72 innings (nine games), he struck out 103 batters. He didn't do as well with the Beavers, going 2–4 with a 3.94 ERA with them. However, he did strikeout 37 batters in 32 innings of work. Overall, Paul went 5–6 with a 2.34 ERA. He struck out 140 batters in 104 innings of work (18 games).

Paul again pitched for Reno in 1968, going 2–1 with a 1.09 ERA and 49 strikeouts in four games (33 innings). He was called up to the major leagues and on May 27, he made his big league debut. He performed well in his first appearances, going 2⅔ innings, striking out four (including the first batter he faced, Frank Kostro), allowing only one hit and earning the save. Overall, Paul went 5–8 with a 3.93 ERA in 91⅔ innings of work in his rookie season. He allowed only 72 hits in 36 games (seven starts) and he walked 35 batters.