About Hugh Darwen
Born 1943. Hugh Darwen is a British computer scientist, known for Relational database.
Hugh Darwen is a computer scientist who was an employee of IBM United Kingdom from 1967 to 2004, and has been involved in the development of the relational model.
Work From 1978 to 1982 he was a chief architect on Business System 12, a database management system that faithfully embraced the principles of the relational model. He worked closely with Christopher J. Date and represented IBM at the ISO SQL committees (JTC1 SC32 WG3 Database languages, WG4 SQL/MM ) until his retirement from IBM. Darwen is the author of The Askew Wall and co-author of The Third Manifesto, a proposal for serving object-oriented programs with purely relational databases without compromising either side and getting the best of both worlds, arguably even better than with so-called object-oriented databases.
From 2004 to 2013 he lectured on relational databases at the Department of Computer Science, University of Warwick (UK), and from 1989 to 2014 was a tutor and consultant for the Open University (UK) where he was awarded a MUniv honorary degree for academic and scholarly distinction. He was also awarded a DTech (Doctor in Technology) honorary degree by the University of Wolverhampton. He later taught a database language designed by Chris Date and himself called Tutorial D, part of a proposed family of database query languages called "D".
Bridge He has written several books on the card game bridge, all on the subject of , on which he has a website, www.doubledummy.net, containing over 1500 problems from the late nineteenth century to the present day. Alan Truscott has called him "the world's leading authority" on composed bridge problems. He was responsible for the double dummy column in Bridge Magazine and other UK bridge publications from 1965 to 2004. Since then he has continued to run solving competitions every month at the aforementioned website. In 2026 the International Bridge Press Association made him the first recipient of the John H. Lindsay II Bridge-Analysis Award in recgnition of his contribution over 60 years.
Publications His early works were published under the pseudonym of Andrew Warden: both names are anagrams of his surname. , 213 pp. , 331 pp. , 259 pp. * , 229 pp. * , 231 pp. , 169 pp.
, 67 pp. , 496 pp.
, 547 pp.
, 422 pp.
, 572 pp. , 548 pp.
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Important facts
People in Hugh Darwen's life
Named in this biography and alive at the same time
Contemporaries
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Frequently asked questions
Who is Hugh Darwen?
English academic and writer about computers
When was Hugh Darwen born?
Hugh Darwen was born in 1943 in Warwick.
What is Hugh Darwen's occupation?
Hugh Darwen is a computer scientist.
What is Hugh Darwen known for?
Hugh Darwen is known for Relational database.
What nationality is Hugh Darwen?
Hugh Darwen is British.
Sources & further reading
Cite this page
APA: Biography.guide. (2026). Hugh Darwen. https://biography.guide/hugh-darwen/
MLA: "Hugh Darwen." Biography.guide, https://biography.guide/hugh-darwen/.
Chicago: "Hugh Darwen." Biography.guide. https://biography.guide/hugh-darwen/.
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