Samuel Alexander, British philosopher and Professor of Philosophy at Victoria University, Manchester, was born on 6 January 1859 in Sydney, Australia. He was the fourth child and third son of Samuel and Eliza (née Sloman) Alexander. His father, a saddler, died shortly before his birth, and Alexander was raised by his mother.

Dame Margaret Anstee was born in 1926 and grew up in rural Essex, UK. She was educated at Newnham College, Cambridge, from which she graduated with first-class honours, and at the University of London.

Hannah Arendt was born 14 October 1906 in Hannover, Germany. Her parents, Martha and Paul Arendt, were of Russian-Jewish background. Her father, an engineer, died from syphilitic insanity in 1913. Seven years later, her mother married Martin Beerwald. Arendt attended school in Koenigsberg and finished in 1924. She attended Marburg, Freiburg and Heidelberg, studying theology and philosophy. She eventually attained her doctorate on St. Augustine in 1929.

Raymond Aron was born in Paris on 14 March 1905, the son of Suzanne and Gustav Aron, a professor of jurisprudence. Raymond attended school at the Lycée Hoche in Versailles and the Lycée Condorcet in Paris. Between 1924 and 1928 he attended L’Ecole Normale Supérieure in Paris, where he studied philosophy. He attained first place in the competitively fought Agrégation de Philosophie.

John Baillie was born in Gairloch, Wester Ross, Scotland, on 6 March 1886. He was the eldest of three sons born to the Free Church minister Rev. John Baillie and his wife, Annie Macpherson. Upon his father’s death, when Baillie was just four, his mother moved with her sons to Inverness.

Earl Arthur James Balfour, politician and philosopher, was born on 25 July 1848 in Whittingehame House, East Lothian. Balfour was the third of eight children and eldest son of James Maitland Balfour (landowner and MP) and his wife, Lady Blanche Mary Harriet, who was the second daughter of the second marquess of Salisbury. Arthur's father died from tuberculosis when Arthur was eight and he was raised primarily by his mother.

Ernest William Barnes was born in Altrincham, Cheshire, England, on 1 April 1874. His early education was at King Edward’s School in Birmingham where he won a scholarship from Trinity College, Cambridge in 1893. He obtained first class honours in 1897 and is renowned as one of Cambridge’s most gifted mathematicians. Barnes became a fellow of Trinity College after winning the Smith’s Prize in 1898, and in 1902 he was appointed lecturer, receiving his doctorate (D.Sc.) in 1906, becoming tutor in 1908. The following year he was made a Fellow of the Royal Society (FRS).

James Barr was born in 1924 in Glasgow, Scotland, and received his schooling in Edinburgh. In 1941 he entered the University of Edinburgh as an undergraduate to study classics, but left after one year for wartime service. He resumed his studies in 1945, at which time he met a fellow student of classics, whom he later married. Barr went on to obtain a doctorate from the University of Oxford, and from 1955 to 1961 he served as a professor of Old Testament at Edinburgh. In the course of his career, he also held professorships at Princeton, Manchester, Oxford and Vanderbilt.

Karl Barth was born in Basel, Germany, on 10 May 1886. His father, theologian Fritz Barth, took the family to Berne in 1889 when he took up the university chair as Professor of Church History and New Testament Exegesis. Fritz’s position and interests meant that Karl was exposed to theological enquiry from an early age.