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Sir Neville Francis Fitzgerald Chamberlain, was an officer in the British Indian Army. He was later Inspector-General of the Royal Irish Constabulary, and resigned in the aftermath of the 1916 Easter Rising in Ireland. He is credited with having invented the game of snooker while serving in Jubbulpore (Jabalpur), India, in 1875.

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Pat Fleming is an American professional pocket billiards player and the founder of Accu-Stats Video Productions. Fleming is the fifty-third inductee into the Billiard Congress of America's Hall of Fame, recognized in the Meritorious Service category on June 12, 2008. His Total Performance Average statistical analysis is a standard metric for professional performance.

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John Wesley Hyatt was an American inventor. He is mainly known for simplifying the production of celluloid.

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Wayman Crow McCreery was a real estate agent, opera composer and the internal revenue collector of St. Louis, Missouri. However, he is most well known as the popularizer and possible inventor of three-cushion billiards.

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Captain François Mingaud was an infantry officer in the French army and a carom billiards player. He is credited as the inventor of the leather tip for a billiards cue, a "possibly not original idea" that he perfected while imprisoned in Bicêtre for political outspokenness. This revolutionized the game of billiards, allowing the cue ball to be finely manipulated by the application of spin.

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William Alexander Spinks Jr. (1865–1933) was an American professional player of carom billiards in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. He was often referred to as W. A. Spinks, and occasionally Billy Spinks. In addition to being amateur Pacific Coast Billiards Champion several times, a world-champion contender in more than one cue sports discipline, and an exhibition player in Europe, he became the co-inventor of modern billiard cue chalk in 1897.

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John Thurston (1777–1850) was an inventor who developed the use of slate beds and rubber cushions for billiard tables. He was dubbed "the father of the billiards trade."