Simon Norton was born into a Sephardi family of Iraqi descent, the youngest of three brothers.
[2] From 1964 he was a King's Scholar at Eton College, where he earned a reputation as an eccentric mathematical genius and was taught by Norman Routledge.
He obtained an external first-class degree in Pure Mathematics at the University of London while still at the school, commuting to Royal Holloway College.
He also represented the United Kingdom at the International Mathematical Olympiad thrice consecutively starting from 1967, winning a gold medal each time and two special prizes in 1967 and 1969.
Norton is the subject of the biography The Genius in My Basement, written by his Cambridge tenant, Alexander Masters,[5] which describes his eccentric lifestyle and his life-long obsession with buses.