British botanist. Norman was born in rural Kent and went to Harrow School. He entered the Royal Agricultural College in Cirencester and after a spell working in the Stock Exchange and for a family welfare charity, then serving in the Boer War, he set up as a farmer in Wiltshire. He did not stay long in the county, however. Taking a winter in the West Indies to help his asthma, he instead moved to a farm in the New Forest, Hampshire, where he worked in partnership with a cousin, G. Bonham-Carter, from 1907-1912. He moved to London just before the First World War began, during which he served in Asia as a captain in the Rifle Brigade. It was in Burma that he first became interested in botany when he met the conservator of forests there, Alexander Rodger. Thus in 1920, back in London, his affiliation with the British Museum (Natural History) began when he donated a small collection of specimens from France to the herbarium. Coming in as a volunteer, he went on to devote his attentions to the Umbelliferae (Apiaceae) and published his first paper in 1922. He made a number of small collections, from Algeria (1922), Jamaica and the Caymans (1924) and Cyprus (1930), and completed 22 papers, mainly on umbellifers. He was elected a Fellow of the Linnean Society in 1923 and was a member of the Governing Council of the Empire Forestry Association.

Sources:
A.H.G. Alston, 1947, Proceedings of the Linnean Society, 159(2): 153-154.