Ryszard Ochyra is Head of the Laboratory of Bryology at the Institute of Botany, Polish Academy of Sciences in Krakow. He has undertaken fieldwork in Tanzania, South Africa, Antarctica, Tierra del Fuego, the Falkland Islands, Prince Edward Islands, Iles Crozet and Iles Kerguelen. He has received numerous awards including the prize from the Prime Minister of the Polish Government in 2000 for outstanding scientific achievement.

Ronald I. Lewis-Smith joined the British Antarctic Survey in 1964 as a cryptogamic ecologist, and in 1975 he was appointed as head of the BAS Plant Biology Section. He worked extensively throughout South Georgia, South Orkney and South Shetland Islands, and the Antarctic Peninsula and continental Antarctica, before retiring from BAS in 2002. He was awarded the British Polar Medal in 1977 and a clasp in 2002 in recognition of his contribution to Antarctic science.

Halina Bednarek-Ochyra is based at the Institute of Botany, Polish Academy of Sciences in Krakow, where she became Curator of the Bryophyte Herbarium in 1993. She is a skilled botanical illustrator, and in 1996 and 2004 was awarded a prize by the Second Division of the Polish Academy of Sciences for outstanding scientific achievements.