Norman Arthur Birks was born in Bradford on 1st November 1892, and studied at Bradford Technical College from 1908 to 1911. He then studied engineering at the University of Sheffield, graduating in 1914 with an Associateship in mechanical engineering. During World War I, he served with the 9th York and Lancaster Regiment and the Motor Machine Gun Service, and then transferred to the Royal Flying Corps. He trained at Oxford, Hendon, Doncaster and Catterick, and was posted to France in November 1916 as a pilot in the DH2-equipped 29 Squadron at Izel-le-Hameau. On 5th April 1917, Norman Birks was shot down, wounded, in No-Man´s Land. He was taken prisoner and treated in hospital until September 1917, when he was transferred to the Prisoner of War camp at Holzminden, where he remained until the Armistice.

After the war, Norman Birks returned to engineering and, in 1920 set up in business with his brother Douglas as Abbot, Birks and Co., a company specialising in components for the gas and plumbing industries, of which he remained a director until his retirement in 1970. During World War II, he was second in command of the Air Training Corps squadron at Leatherhead in Surrey. Norman Birks died on 16th June 1989.