Wickliffe Rose was born in Saulsbury, Tennessee, in the United States, 19 November 1862. He was educated at the University of Nashville.

He pursued a career in academia as an Instructor in History and Mathematics, 1891-2, and Professor of History and the Philosophy of Education, 1892-1902, at Peabody College; Professor of History and the Philosophy of Ecuation at the University of Tennessee, from 1902; and Dean of Peabody College and the University of Nashville, 1904-7.

He joined the Peabody Education Fund as its General Agent, in 1910, and was Executive Secretary of the Southern Education Board, 1909-10. His involvement with various organisations funded by the Rockefeller Foundation begain with his appointment as Executive Secretaty of the Rockefeller Sanitary Commission, in 1910, and encompassed the following roles: an original trustee of the Rockefeller Foundation, from 1913; Chairman of the War Relief Commission, 1914-17; General Director of the International Health Division, 1915-23; President of the General Education Board and the International Education Board, from 1923. He retired from these roles with the Rockefeller Foundation in 1928

He was involved in global public health campaigns to eradicate hookworm disease and yellow fever. He also helped to found public health schools at Johns Hopkins Univerity, Harvard University and the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine. He contributed to the work of the League of Nations Health Organization.

He died in British Columbia, 5 September 1931.

Roy Acheson was born in Belfast, 18 August 1921, and educated at Merchiston Castle School, Edinburgh, Trinity College Dublin, and the University of Oxford. He saw military service with the North Irish Horse in Tunisia and Italy during the Second World War, before returning to his medical studies.

During his academic career he was a lecturer at Trinity College Dublin; a senior lecturer and reader in social and preventive medicine at Guy's Hospital and the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, 1958-62; the founder of a division of chronic disease epidemiology at Yale University, 1962-72; the founder of a centre for extension training in community medicine at the University of London, from 1972, and Professor of Health Service Studies there, from 1974; and Foundation Professor of Community Medicine at the University of Cambridge, from 1977. He was a fellow of Churchill College, Cambridge. He was closely involved with the Rockefeller Foundation, particularly its International Clinical Epidemiology Network, and the International Epidemiological Association, which was initiated by the Foundation.

He died in Brighton, 2 April 2003.