Norman Alan Burges CBE (5 August 1911 – 4 October 2002), was an Australian botanist who became the first vice-chancellor of the New University of Ulster in Coleraine, Northern Ireland.
He was born 5 August 1911, in East Maitland, New South Wales, and took his first degree and MSc at the University of Sydney, then studied for his PhD in mycology[1] at Emmanuel College, Cambridge.
After a short period as a Research Fellow at Emmanuel, at the outbreak of war in 1939 he joined the Royal Air Force serving in Bomber Command.
[2] After the war he returned to Australia and in 1947 became professor of botany at the University of Sydney, and later dean of the Faculty of Science and a Fellow of Senate there.
[2] In 1952 he returned to England to take the post of professor of botany (a chair endowed by and named after Holbrook Gaskell) at the University of Liverpool[4] Subsequently he became acting vice-chancellor (1964–5) and pro-vice chancellor (1965–66) there.