Sir Peter Markham Scott (1909-1989), was the only child of Captain Robert Falcon Scott. He was educated at Oundle School and Trinity College, Cambridge, where he obtained an ordinary degree and took up wildfowling. He went on to spend some time at the Akademie der Bildenden Künste in Munich and the Royal Academy Schools in London and held his first one-man exhibition in 1933. He became well-known as a painter of wildlife, especially birds. During the Second World War he served in the Royal Navy Volunteer Reserves.

In 1946 Scott founded the Severn Wildfowl Trust (now known as the Wetlands and Wildfowl Trust). He led several ornithological expeditions worldwide and helped established a BBC natural history unit in Bristol. From that unit he created and presented the natural history programme Look, which ran from 1955-1969. He was also a regular on the radio programme Children's Hour, and presented commentaries for Anglia Television's series Survival.

Scott wrote eighteen books and illustrated twenty others, including his autobiography The Eye of the Wind.

Scott was also a talented sportsman, representing Great Britain at sailing in the 1936 Olympics, where he won a bronze medal. He took up gliding in the 1950s, becoming British champion in 1963.

Scott was a co-founder and the first Chairman of the World Wildlife Fund, Chairman of the Species Survival Commission of the International Union for Conservation of Nature and Natural Resources (1962-1981), President of the Fauna and Flora Preservation Society (1981-1989), Director of the Loch Ness Phenomena Investigation Bureau Ltd. (1961-1977) and Chancellor of the University of Birmingham (1974-1983). He was awarded a CBE in 1953, was knighted in 1973 and was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1987.