Louis Agassiz (1807-1873) was a Swiss-born geologist and biologist who immigrated to America in 1847. After attaining a professorship at Harvard, Agassiz founded the university’s Museum of Comparative Zoology and published numerous research papers and books that outlined the gathering and analysis of observational data, including research on the fossil record of extinct fishes and evidence of glaciation (evidence of glaciers where none existed in the present day). A supporter of polygeny, Agassiz believed that human races belonged to different species, and, as such, advocated for the separation and limiting of black people in America.

Alfred Binet (1857-1911) was a French psychologist who created the first IQ tests to differentiate students with special needs in a classroom. During his lifetime, Binet pursued a wide range of interests, ranging from law to physiology. In 1895, he founded the publication L’Année psychologique, the first French journal to focus on psychology research. Between 1908 and 1911, he and his colleague, Théodore Simon, published versions of their IQ scales, which they had created and refined with the intent of identifying ranges of reasoning and thinking ability among children.