Norman Willison Simmonds FRSE FIB FLS (5[1][2] or 15[3][4] December 1922–4 January 2002)[1][4] was a British botanist.
[5] He was born in Bedford on 5[1][2] or 15 December 1922[3][4] the son of a civil servant.
He won a scholarship to study natural sciences at the Downing College, Cambridge, and then in 1943 won a further scholarship to study at the Imperial College of Tropical Agriculture on the island of Trinidad.
[5][3] From 1959 to 1965 he was the head of the Potato Genetics Department of the John Innes Institute.
[3][4] In 1965 he became Director of the Scottish Plant Breeding Station which was then in Pentlandfield, a suburb of Edinburgh.