Scott was born in
London on 28 November 1854, the fifth and youngest son of architect Sir
George Gilbert Scott and his wife Caroline Oldrid. Scott received private tuitions and was a collector of plants and was a self-taught systematic botanist. From the age of fourteen, he read the works of
Joseph Hooker,
Alexander Braun,
Hugo von Mohl,
Carl Wilhelm von Naegeli and
Wilhelm Hofmeister. When he studied Natural Sciences at
Christ Church, Oxford, graduating
B.A. 1876 (
M.A. 1872) he found little encouragement in botany and he studied engineering from 1876 to 1879. After the death of his father in 1878 he became financially independent and resumed his interests in botany. He studied as a postgraduate at
Würzburg University in Germany, where he studied under the famous botanist
Julius von Sachs, and earned his
doctorate. He showed the development of latex vessels in tissues in his 1881 dissertation titled “
The Development of the Milk Vessels in Plants”. In 1882, Scott was appointed Assistant to Daniel Oliver, the Professor of Botany at
University College London, and in 1885 as Assistant Professor in Biology (Botany) at the
Royal College of Science, South Kensington under
T. H. Huxley. He was the first lecturer in botany at University College who allowed women to attend his classes. One of his most brilliant students was
Harold Wager, who went on to become a Fellow of the
Royal Society of London in 1904. In 1892, Scott was appointed the first Keeper of the
Jodrell Laboratory at the
Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, a position he held for fourteen years until 1906, under the Directorship of the botanist
William Turner Thiselton-Dyer, one of his early mentors. Throughout his life, Scott published many books and papers on botany and palaeobotany in scientific journals. He worked closely with specialists in
paleobotany such as
William Crawford Williamson and Francis Wall Oliver. He supported the education of women and was the first lecturer in botany at University College who allowed women to attend his classes. ==Honours and awards==