We wish David Norwood all the best on his birthday,

David Robert Norwood was born in Farnworth, Bolton, Greater Manchester on October 3rd 1968. His mother’s maiden name was Mellor and his father was an electrician.

Mary Hopkin was still UK number one with “Those were the days” and would remain at number one for six weeks in total.

David read history at Keble College, Oxford before pursuing a successful business career (see below).

David became an International Master in 1985 and a Grandmaster in 1989 and his peak FIDE rating (Felice and Megabase 2020) was 2545 in July 1994 at the age of 26.

David has a score of +2 against Viswanathan Anand, +1 against Neil McDonald, +2 against Keith Arkell and +2 against Mark Hebden.

Preparing for David would have been fairly straightforward as he played almost the same opening with white and black playing 1.g3 (and less frequently, 1.d4) and the Modern Defence although his did flick the Modern Benoni into the mix every now and then.

[embedyt] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xM8wGSBHi2c[/embedyt]

As well as moving to Oxford for University he was =1st at the 1988 (fifth) NatWest Young Masters with 6/9 (along with Adams and Kudrin) securing a GM norm :

In 1990 David became the first Grandmaster to play in the annual Varsity match. This was the 108th such encounter and David played on board one against Jeremy P Sharp of Downing College, Cambridge. David first played in the 107th match in 1989 on board two below James Howell. David played one more time in 1991 scoring 2/3 from his three appearences.

According to FIDE David is registered with Andorra which appropriately (for DN) has Catalan as its national language. David has yet to win the Andorran Championship. He first played in the Andorran Open in 2011 and came close to winning in 2013 with 7/9. Since 2017 David has not played in a FIDE rated event.

One of David’s most important claims to fame was being the Best Man at the wedding of Julian and Lizette Hodgson.

[pgn]
[Event “London NWYM”]
[Site “London”]
[Date “1988.??.??”]
[Round “?”]
[White “Norwood, David”]
[Black “Kudrin, Sergey”]
[Result “1-0”]
[ECO “A46”]
[WhiteElo “2470”]
[BlackElo “2545”]
[Annotator “British Chess News”]
[PlyCount “71”]
[EventDate “1988.??.??”]
[EventType “tourn”]
[EventRounds “9”]
[EventCountry “ENG”]
[EventCategory “10”]
[SourceTitle “CBM 009”]
[Source “ChessBase”]
[SourceDate “1989.04.01”]
[SourceVersion “1”]
[SourceVersionDate “1989.04.01”]
[SourceQuality “1”]

{[%evp 0,71,21,37,21,38,34,18,55,44,39,35,22,28,98,37,49,47,20,7,0,0,32,39,55,
60,65,46,41,49,33,43,31,54,57,53,59,51,59,71,79,83,108,90,97,74,78,70,105,127,
127,124,133,135,127,133,164,127,127,127,156,227,245,173,192,177,177,82,346,346,
29991,29992,29993,29994]} 1. d4 Nf6 2. Nf3 e6 3. g3 b5 {This is more common
than you might imagine. There are 3500+ games with 3…b5 in MegaBase 2020.} 4.
Bg2 Bb7 5. O-O Be7 (5… c5) 6. Bg5 (6. a4) 6… c5 7. c3 Na6 8. Na3 Qb6 9. c4
b4 10. Nb5 cxd4 11. Qxd4 $146 {[#]} (11. a4 {Pantaleev – Malakhatko, 2009.})
11… Qxd4 12. Nfxd4 Bxg2 13. Kxg2 O-O 14. Rfd1 Rfc8 15. Rac1 Nc5 16. Bf4 {
Preparing Nd6 should black play a6.} a6 17. Nd6 Bxd6 18. Bxd6 Nfe4 19. Nb3 $1 {
[#] with the pawn on g3 the dark squared bishop is perhaps less valuable.} Nxd6
(19… Na4 $6 20. Bxb4 Nxb2 21. Rd4 $16) 20. Rxd6 $16 Na4 (20… Ra7) 21. Rxd7
Nxb2 22. c5 Na4 23. c6 Nc3 24. Na5 Nxa2 25. Rc4 $18 g6 26. c7 Kg7 27. Nb3 g5
28. Nc5 (28. Nd4) 28… Kg6 29. Nd3 b3 30. Ne5+ Kf6 31. f4 (31. Rc5) 31… gxf4
32. gxf4 (32. Nxf7 $1 {is crushing} Kg7 33. Nd8+ Kf6 34. Rxf4+ Kg6 35. Nxe6 {
and its mate in 5.}) 32… Kg7 33. Rxf7+ Kg8 (33… Kh8) 34. f5 $1 b2 35. Rg4+
Kh8 36. Rgg7 {and Black resigned} 1-0
[/pgn]

[embedyt] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZVOqtoKUMoQ[/embedyt]

David is an active director of Genomics Plc, and 4D Pharma Plc, both companies operate in the biomedical sector.

Here is a detailed article about David from the Oxford alumni pages.

 

[embedyt] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LnzDlmKyurM[/embedyt]

As a writer David wrote a chess column for The Daily Telegraph and The Economist (London) and he has written the following books :

From Wikipedia :

“David Robert Norwood (born 3 October 1968) is an English businessman who runs an investment fund that finances spin-off companies from Oxford University science departments. He is also a chess grandmaster, chess writer, former captain of the English chess team and now represents Andorra at chess.”

[pgn]
[Event “Bundesliga 9394”]
[Site “Germany”]
[Date “1994.01.29”]
[Round “6.2”]
[White “Loeffler, Stefan”]
[Black “Norwood, David Robert”]
[Result “0-1”]
[ECO “A40”]
[WhiteElo “2440”]
[BlackElo “2525”]
[Annotator “British Chess News”]
[PlyCount “46”]
[EventDate “1993.11.06”]
[EventType “team-tourn”]
[EventRounds “15”]
[EventCountry “GER”]
[SourceTitle “GER-chT”]
[Source “ChessBase”]
[SourceDate “1999.07.01”]
[SourceVersion “1”]
[SourceVersionDate “1999.07.01”]
[SourceQuality “1”]
[WhiteTeam “Zehlendorf”]
[BlackTeam “Solingen”]
[WhiteTeamCountry “GER”]
[BlackTeamCountry “GER”]

{[%evp 0,46,19,31,76,50,32,32,35,29,60,26,34,34,23,42,93,89,91,60,61,49,69,38,
38,32,52,61,55,14,10,12,12,10,12,-192,-173,-209,-216,-383,-444,-722,-753,-840,
-799,-681,-681,-690,-685]} 1. d4 g6 2. c4 Bg7 3. Nc3 c5 4. d5 f5 5. h4 Bxc3+ 6.
bxc3 Nf6 7. h5 Rg8 8. hxg6 hxg6 9. Nf3 Qa5 {[#]} ({Relevant:} 9… d6 10. Ng5
Qa5 11. Qb3 Nbd7 12. Bf4 Rb8 13. e3 b5 14. cxb5 Bb7 15. e4 fxe4 16. Bd2 c4 17.
Bxc4 Nc5 18. Qc2 Rc8 19. O-O Ncd7 20. Bb3 Qxb5 21. c4 Qa6 22. Bc3 Rxc4 23. Bxc4
Qxc4 24. Qb2 Qxd5 25. Rfd1 Qxg5 26. Qxb7 e3 27. Qxa7 e2 28. Rd3 Kf7 29. Re1 Rh8
30. Re3 Qf4 31. Rg3 Rh5 32. Qe3 Qxe3 33. Rxe3 e5 34. R3xe2 Ke6 35. a4 Nd5 36.
Rc2 Nc5 37. a5 Nd3 38. Ra1 N3f4 39. Be1 {Dautov,R (2610)-Vokac,M (2450)
Dortmund 1992 1-0}) 10. Qb3 $146 ({Predecessor:} 10. Bd2 d6 11. Ng5 Nbd7 12.
Qb1 Nb6 13. e3 Bd7 14. Bd3 {1/2-1/2 (14) Finegold,B (2445)-Vokac,M (2465)
Prague 1990}) 10… d6 11. Bg5 Nbd7 12. Nd2 Nb6 13. e4 Bd7 14. f4 fxe4 15. Bxf6
exf6 16. Nxe4 {[#]} O-O-O $1 $11 17. Nxf6 $2 Ba4 $19 18. Qa3 Rgf8 19. Ng4 Rde8+
20. Kd2 Rxf4 21. Ne3 Rf2+ 22. Ke1 Rc2 23. Rh8 Rxc3 0-1
[/pgn]

“The son of an electrician, Norwood graduated with a history degree from Keble College, Oxford University in 1988 before joining city investment bank Banker’s Trust in 1991.”

“Norwood cofounded Oxford Sciences Innovation, a £600m investment company dedicated to funding deep science from Oxford University, and was its CEO from 2015 to 2019. Formerly he was founder of IP Group plc, a fund that invested in spinoffs from Oxford University’s Chemistry department, in exchange for 50% of the revenues from the licensing of the department’s intellectual property.

In 2017, Norwood donated £1.9M to Keble College’s future hub for innovation at Oxford University.”

From The Times of London, November 20th, 2008 by Ian King, Business Editor :

“Entrepreneur David Norwood swaps City for sun, sea and writing

One of the City’s best-known entrepreneurs resigned all his directorships yesterday – to move to a desert island (in the Bahamas)  where he plans to become a writer.

David Norwood, a former chief executive of the stockbrokers Evolution and Beeson Gregory, resigned from the boards of a number of companies, including Oxford Advanced Surfaces, ORA Capital, Oxeco and Plus-listed Green Chemicals. He has also given up his role as special projects director at IP Group, the intellectual property commercialisation company, which he started eight years ago and floated on AIM in 2003. Shares of all five companies fell after the news was released.”