English paleobotanist and leading authority of his time on the structure of fossil plants.

Scott graduated from Christ Church College, Oxford, in 1876. In 1880 he studied under the German botanist Julius Von Sachs at the University of Würzburg. Scott then held teaching posts at University College in London and the Normal School of Science. In 1892 he became honorary keeper of the Jodrell Laboratory in Kew, where he remained until 1906.

Scott's earliest published work was in plant anatomy. His Introduction to Structural Botany (1894, 1896) was a guide to the structure of both flowering and flowerless plants. With the English paleobotanist William Crawford Williamson (Williamson, William Crawford), he published three papers on fossil-plant morphology in 1894–95. After Williamson's death in 1895, Scott wrote a series of memoirs for various journals in which he described many hitherto unknown fossil plants. His Studies in Fossil Botany (1900) greatly popularized paleobotany.