For many years William was unaware of his father's important work at the Bletchley Park WWII codebreaking centre because it was protected under the Official Secrets Act until at least in the mid-1970s.

As his mother Lyn Irvine was raised in Aberdeen with family across the Scottish Borders, William spent much time in the Highlands and particularly in Torridon and Applecross.

He attended Manchester Grammar School before studying Architecture and Engineering at St. John's College, Cambridge, obtaining a BA with first-class honours in 1961.

Newman completed a PhD in Computer Graphics at Imperial College London in 1968 under the supervision of Professor Bill Elliott.

[5] He then joined Ivan Sutherland's research team developing software for interactive computer graphics systems, first at Harvard and then the University of Utah.

With Margery Eldridge and Mik Lamming he pursued a research project in Activity-Based Information Retrieval’ (AIR).

He developed an approach based on Critical Parameters[8] for designing interactive systems that deliver tangible performance improvements to the user.

[9] After leaving Xerox, Newman worked as a consultant, advising a number of organisations on interactive systems design.