Gianfrancesco Penni
Born in Florence to a family of weavers, Penni entered Raphael's workshop very early in his life, and collaborated with him on several works, including the famous Rooms of the Vatican Palace, as well as the frescoes of Villa Farnesina, both in Rome. Heinrich Wölfflin and some other writers credited him with the entire execution of the Raphael Cartoons, with Raphael only creating the initial design, though more recent writers believe Raphael did much of the work himself.
Ralph Raphael
Ralph Raphael was born in Croydon, London on New Year's Day 1921, the son of Jack Raphael and his wife, Lily Woolfe. He attended secondary school at Wesley College, Dublin and then Tottenham County School, where a chemistry master, Edgar Ware, introduced him to the subject that would become Raphael's lifetime passion. In 1939 he won scholarships to study at Imperial College, graduating BSc with a first-class degree in 1941 and winning the Hofmann Prize for practical chemistry.
During the Second World War both the undergraduate and PhD courses at Imperial College were of two year's duration and Raphael completed the latter in 1943. His doctoral work, aimed at the synthesis of vitamin A, was published in five collaborative papers on the chemistry of acetylenes and that topic became a hallmark of his subsequent research career.