Herbert Aaron Hauptman (February 14, 1917 – October 23, 2011) was an American mathematician and Nobel laureate. He pioneered and developed a mathematical method that has changed the whole field of chemistry and opened a new era in research in determination of molecular structures of crystallized materials. Today, Hauptman's direct methods, which he has continued to improve and refine, are routinely used to solve complicated structures. It was the application of this mathematical method to a wide variety of chemical structures that led the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences to name Hauptman and Jerome Karle recipients of the 1985 Nobel Prize in Chemistry.

He was born in New York City, the oldest child of Israel Hauptman and Leah Rosenfeld. He was married to Edith Citrynell since November 10, 1940, with two daughters, Barbara (1947) and Carol (1950).

He was interested in science and mathematics from an early age which he pursued at Townsend Harris High School, graduated from the City College of New York (1937) and obtained an M.A. degree in mathematics from Columbia University in 1939.

Jerome Karle, born Jerome Karfunkel (born June 18, 1918) is an American physical chemist. Jointly with Herbert A. Hauptman, he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1985, for the direct analysis of crystal structures using X-ray scattering techniques.

Karle was born in New York City on June 18, 1918. He was born into a Jewish family with a strong interest in the arts. He had played piano as a youth and had participated in a number of competitions, but he was far more interested in science. He attended Abraham Lincoln High School in Brooklyn, and would later join Arthur Kornberg (awarded the Nobel in Medicine in 1959) and Paul Berg (a winner in Chemistry in 1980), as graduates of the school to win Nobel Prizes. As a youth, Karle enjoyed handball, ice skating, touch football and swimming in the nearby Atlantic Ocean.

He started college at the age of 15 and received his bachelor's degree from the City College of New York in 1937, where he took additional courses in biology, chemistry and math in addition to the required curriculum there. He earned a master's degree from Harvard University in 1938, having majored in biology.

Richard Burton Matheson (born February 20, 1926) is an American author and screenwriter, primarily in the fantasy, horror, and science fiction genres. He is perhaps best known as the author of The Incredible Shrinking Man, What Dreams May Come, Bid Time Return (filmed as Somewhere in Time), A Stir of Echoes, and I Am Legend, all of which have been adapted as major motion pictures, the last at least three times. Matheson has also written for several The Twilight Zone television show episodes such as "Nightmare at 20,000 Feet", and adapted his 1971 short story "Duel" into a screenplay later that year for the Steven Spielberg–directed television movie of the same name.

Matheson was born in Allendale, New Jersey, the son of Norwegian immigrants Fanny (née Mathieson) and Bertolf Matheson, a tile floor installer. Matheson was raised in Brooklyn and graduated from Brooklyn Technical High School in 1943. He then entered the military and spent World War II as an infantry soldier. In 1949 he earned his bachelor's degree in journalism from the University of Missouri and moved to California in 1951. He married Ruth Ann Woodson on July 1, 1952 and has four children, three of whom (Chris, Richard Christian, and Ali Matheson) are writers of fiction and screenplays.

Jiroemon Kimura (Japanese: 木村 次郎右衛門 Kimura Jirōemon, born 19 April 1897) is a Japanese supercentenarian who, at the age of &10000000000000115000000115 years, &1000000000000006800000068 days, is the world's oldest living man, since the death of Walter Breuning on 14 April 2011. Being 113 years 360 days at the succession, Kimura is the oldest man ever to gain the title of oldest living man. He is the oldest living person in Japan and in Asia since the death of Chiyono Hasegawa on 2 December 2011, and the last living person in Asia born in 1897. Kimura is the first man to be Japan's oldest living person since Denzo Ishizaki, who held the title in the spring of 1999. Kimura has been the oldest living man in Japan since the death of Tomoji Tanabe on 19 June 2009, and the oldest Japanese and Asian man ever since surpassing Yukichi Chuganji on 26 October 2011. On 2 May 2012, Kimura surpassed Chiyono Hasegawa as the oldest Asian person ever to have lived in three centuries. He is one of only three men verified to have reached age 115 - and the first Asian man to have done so.