Norman Davis was a U.S. diplomat. He was born in Bedford, Tennessee. He served as President Wilson's Assistant Secretary of Treasury and later as Undersecretary of State. He was a delegate to a General Disarmament Conference in Geneva in 1931. He was chairman of the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies from 1938 to 1944 and president of the Council on Foreign Relations 1936-1944.
In 1939, following the outbreak of war in Europe, Davis chaired the steering committee of the Council on Foreign Relations' War and Peace Studies project, created to advise the U.S. Government on wartime policy. He would also join the State Department's committee on overseas war measures, the fifteen-member Advisory Committee on Problems of Foreign Relations.