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George Lawson was born 12 October 1827 at Newport, Scotland, to Alexander Lawson and Margaret McEwan. He was married first to Lucy Stapley (d. 1871) of Edinburgh, with whom he had two daughters. In 1876, five years after Stapley's death, he married Caroline Matilda Knox, née Jordan, in Halifax.

Lawson was initially apprenticed to a solicitor, but was moved to study the natural and physical sciences at the University of Edinburgh. He received his DPhil from the University of Giessen and moved to Canada in 1858 to take up an appointment as professor of chemistry and natural history at Queen's University in Kingston, Ontario. During his time at Queen's he founded the Botanical Society of Canada (1860).

In 1863 Lawson left Queen's to join the newly reorganized Dalhousie College as professor of chemistry and mineralogy, where he introduced laboratory work and field trips into his classes. He lectured at the Halifax Medical College, helped to organize the Technological Institute of Halifax (1877), and was an avid supporter of the Nova Scotian Institute of Natural Science (later the Nova Scotian Institute of Science). He was a charter member of the Royal Society of Canada, serving as its president in 1887–1888, and was involved in overseas organizations such as London's Royal Horticultural Society. Lawson died of a stroke in 1895.

George C. Laurence was born in 1905 in Charlottetown, Prince Edward Island. He received his BSc (1925) and MSc (1927) in physics from Dalhousie University and earned a PhD at Cambridge University. In 1930 he joined the National Research Council in Ottawa, where he worked on radiation dosages in cancer treatments and promoting safety from radiation exposure. From 1946 Laurence was the scientific advisor to the Canadian delegation to the United Nations Atomic Energy Commission. He was appointed chairman of the Reactor Safety Advisory Committee at Atomic Energy of Canada Limited in 1956 and from 1961-1970 he served as president of the Atomic Energy Canada Board.

Laurence received several awards for his work, including the MBE, the Canadian Association of Physicists medal, the W.B. Lewis medal from the Canadian Nuclear Association, and a number of honorary degrees, including a Doctor of Laws from Dalhousie in 1967. George Laurence married Elfreda Blois in 1931, with whom he had two daughters. He lived in Chalk River, Ontario, from 1946 until his death in 1987.

Toni Ann Laidlaw (nee Johnston) was born in Toronto, Ontario, in 1939. She earned a BA Honours in English and Psychology at the University of Calgary in 1967, followed in 1970 with a Masters of Education with a specialization in Counselling Psychology. Her PhD in Educational Psychology was granted in 1978 by the University of Alberta, her thesis titled: "Concepts of Femininity, 1890-1930: Reflections of Cultural Attitudes in Psychological Theories." In 1982 she became a registered psychologist in Nova Scotia.

In 1974 Toni Laidlaw was appointed as a lecturer in the Department of Education at Dalhousie University, teaching in the area of educational psychology and offering one of Dalhousie's earliest classes in women's studies. She became an Assistant Professor in 1978 and an Associated Professor in 1980. In 1990 she was appointed Full Professor in Women's Studies. In 1997 she was appointed to the Division of Medical Education at the Faculty of Medicine, where she served as Program Director and Chair until her retirement in 2005.

In her final faculty position, Toni Laidlaw developed and implemented Dalhousie's medical communication skills curriculum. Her medical education research around communication skills teaching has been widely published, including studies on the needs assessment of communication skills at Dalhousie. She is the author, with C. Malmo and Associates, of Healing Voices: Feminist Approaches to Therapy with Women (1990), and with M. Conrad and D. Smyth, of No Place Like Home: Diaries and Letters of Nova Scotia Women, 1771-1938 (1988). She has also published articles on feminist therapy, family violence and incest, and sexual harrassment.