Louis Francis Wouters was born on October 29, 1921, in Antwerp, Belgium. His family moved to California in 1930. Louis married Gladys C. on March 14, 1982. Gladys had three children: Glenn, Clark, and Amy.
He attended school the University of California, Berkeley. Wouters obtained a bachelor of arts degree from the University of California, Berkeley in 1942. He then earns his doctor of philosophy degree from the University of California, Berkeley in 1952.
J. Clyde Barcus was born December 27, 1889 in Huntington, Cable County, West Virginia. He attended Pikesville Collegiate Institute in Kentucky, where he studied for a degree in mining engineering. His studies were temporarily suspended, however, when Clyde followed his father Clyde Sr., who operated a coal mine at the time, to Goldfield, Nevada after the gold rush of 1906. Their hoped-for mine never came to be, and Clyde Sr.