Richard Cobden, son of a Sussex farmer, began his working life as a traveller for a London calico merchant. He rose to become partner of the company, and in 1832 he settled in Manchester. He travelled extensively, and published his first free trade pamphlets in the 1830's. He was the foremost leader of the Anti Corn Law League, a radical movement calling for a change in the restrictive trade controls imposed by the government. He was highly influential in the House of Commons, being MP successively for Stockport, West Riding and Rochdale. He refused to hold government office, or a title, and he last spoke in the House of Commons in 1864.

Marie Nordlinger was the daughter of the German Italian Manchester merchant Selmar Nordlinger.

In 1896 young Marie Nordlinger arrived in Paris from England to study painting, joining her cousin, the composer Reynaldo Hahn. His friend Marcel Proust was an aspiring novelist and student of art and philosophy. A friendship developed between the three, the mainspring being Marie's and Marcel's devotion to Reynaldo. Marie has been considered to be a model for some episodes featuring Albertine in Proust's A la Recherche du Temps Perdu.

Their close relationship was to last nearly thirty years, ending only with Marcel's death in 1922 and Reynaldo's in 1947. Marie later married Herr Riefstal, and published a volume of Proust's letters to her. Her collection of Proust's works, and other material relating to him, comprising over 400 volumes, was given to the John Rylands Library.

Henry Enfield Roscoe was to become Professor of Chemistry at Owens College, later to become the University of Manchester, from 1857 to 1886, and built the first ever practical chemistry laboratory in Britain. Also at one time he was elected Liberal MP for South Manchester.
The present University School of Pharmacy contains the laboratory in which he first isolated the element 23 - Vanadium in 1865. In 1858 Roscoe also reputedly produced the world's first flashlight photograph. The Roscoe Medal, commemorating this distinguished Victorian chemist is awarded for outstanding contributions to and excellence in Chemistry in the UK.
Roscoe believed that students should be given "a careful and complete general training". In his presidential address before the British Association for the Advancement of Science in 1884, he stated that his students would be given "as sound and extensive a foundation in the theory and practice of chemical science as their time and abilities will allow." Roscoe was a Fellow of the Royal Society.
The University's Roscoe Building is named after him.