Hugh Darwen was employed in IBM’s software development divisions from 1967 to 2004. In the early part of his career, he was involved in DBMS development; from 1978 to 1982, he was one of the chief architects of an IBM product called Business System 12, a product that faithfully embraced the principles of the relational model. He was an active participant in the development of the international standard for SQL (and related standards) from 1988 to 2004. Based in the UK, for several years after his retirement from IBM in 2004, he taught relational database theory at Warwick University.  He was also a a tutor and course development consultant for the Open University from 1988 to 2013. Other than his books at Bookboon his  publications have all been collaborative efforts with Chris Date, perhaps the best known and mostly highly acclaimed author in the field of relational databases:

C.J. Date and Hugh Darwen: Databases, Types, and The Relational Model: The Third Manifesto. 3rd edition, Addison-Wesley, 2007.

C.J. Date, Hugh Darwen, Nikos Lorentzos: Temporal Data and The Relational Model. Morgan Kaufmann, 2001.

C.J. Date with Hugh Darwen: Relational Database Writings, 1989-1991. Addison-Wesley, 1992.

As Andrew Warden: "Adventures in Relationland", a special contribution in C.J. Date, Relational Database Writings, 1985-1989. Addison-Wesley, 1990.

C.J. Date with Hugh Darwen. A Guide to The SQL Standard. 4th edition, Addison-Wesley, 1997.

C.J. Date and Hugh Darwen. Database Explorations: Essays on The Third Manifesto and Related Topics . Trafford, 2010.