Harold Plenderleith was born in
Coatbridge on 19 September 1898. He was the eldest child of Robert James Plenderleith who was art master at
Harris Academy in
Dundee and Harold was consequently educated there, also being school
dux. His younger brother was
Robert Waldron Plenderleith FRSE. He then joined University College in St Andrews in 1916 but after two terms went to officer training school due to the
First World War becoming a Lieutenant in the
Lancashire Fusiliers in 1917. He served on the Western Front from August 1917. He received a shrapnel wound in the arm on the
Ypres Salient. He was awarded the
Military Cross in 1918 for a successful night raid on a German pillbox. In 1919 he then returned to study
Chemistry at
University College, Dundee and graduated with a BSc in 1921 and gained his doctorate in 1923. In 1924, he began to work at the
British Museum with
Alexander Scott in the newly created Department of Scientific and Industrial Research. This department had been created by the museum to address objects in the
collection that had begun to rapidly deteriorate as a result of being stored in the
London Underground railway tunnels during the
First World War. Scott and Plenderleith began applying their knowledge of Chemistry to the deterioration of museum objects and began scientific conservation in the United Kingdom. As an archaeologist he was involved in the excavations of the tomb of
Tutankhamun in Egypt,
Sir Leonard Woolley's site at Ur, and the
Sutton Hoo ship burial. In 1934 he was elected a Fellow of the
Royal Society of Edinburgh. His proposers were Alexander Scott,
Arthur Pillans Laurie,
Sir James Irvine and
William Peddie. In the
Second World War he worked with Sir
John Forsdyke on the relocation of precious artefacts from the British Museum into mines and quarries in Wales to avoid bomb damage. On the night of 10-11 May 1941 when the British Museum was bombed, he crawled "like a snake" into a burning book storage area to investigate the damage. Plenderleith retired from the British Museum in 1959 to become the first director of the International Center for the study of the Preservation and Restoration of Cultural Property (
ICCROM). He was the director of ICCROM until 1971. He helped set up and then served on the Council of the
International Institute for Conservation from its creation in 1950 until 1971 and was IIC's President from 1965 to 1968. He received many medals throughout his career, including: the Gold Medal of the Society of Antiquaries in 1964; Unesco Bronze Medal, 1971; the Conservation Service Award of the U.S. Department of the Interior, 1976 and the
ICCROM Award, Rome, 1979. He died in
Inverness on 2 November 1997 aged 99. ==Family==