William Augustus Norton was born on October 25, 1810, in East Bloomfield, New York.

He was a civil engineer, educator, and author. In 1831, he graduated from the US Military Academy at West Point, New York, where he began his academic career as an assistant professor of natural and experimental philosophy. He participated in the Black Hawk War in 1832. In 1833, he became a professor of natural philosophy and astronomy at the City University of New York. In 1839, he moved to Delaware College as a professor, and in 1850, he became its president. He had plans to turn the school into a scientific institution but was discouraged. He left in 1850 to become a professor of natural philosophy and civil engineering at Brown University. He was elected to the American Philosophical Society in 1844. In 1852, Norton moved to Yale College to become its first professor of engineering. He was one of the founding faculty of the Sheffield Scientific School in 1854. In 1873, Norton became a member of the National Academy of Sciences. He remained at Yale until his death in 1883. He is the author of a college astronomy textbook, “An Elementary Treatise on Astronomy” (1839) and “First Book of Natural Philosophy and Astronomy” (1858).

In 1839, he married Elizabeth Emery Stevens (1816–1903). He died on September 21, 1883, in New Haven, Connecticut.