Sir Peter Markham Scott

Sir Peter Markham Scott (1909-1989) was born in London on 14 September 1909, the son of the Antarctic explorer Captain Robert Falcon Scott. He was educated at Oundle School, near Peterborough, and Trinity College, Cambridge, before attending the Munich State Academy of Arts, then the Royal Academy School of Painting, Sculpture and Architecture, London. Scott's paintings were exhibited at the Royal Academy from 1933. During the Second World War, he served in the Royal Navy. He founded the Severn Wildfowl Trust (now the Wildfowl and Wetlands Trust) at Slimbridge, Gloucestershire, in 1946, and was a co-founder of the World Wildlife Fund (now the World Wide Fund for Nature), serving as its first Chairman, 1961-1982, and playing a leading role in its fundraising projects and campaigns. Scott visited the Antarctic on five occasions, and also carried out ornithological expeditions. In the 1940s he became a well-known broadcaster, and he was instrumental in the development of the B.B.C.'s Natural History Unit at Bristol. He was Chancellor of Birmingham University, 1974-1983. Scott died on 29 August 1989.