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Andrew Cunningham Scott | |
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| Born | 16 February 1952 |
| Nationality | British |
| Alma mater | Bedford College, London (BSc) Birkbeck College (PhD) |
| Spouse | Anne |
| Children | 2 |
| Scientific career | |
| Fields | Geology |
| Institutions | Royal Holloway University University of London |
| Thesis | Environmental Control of Westphalian Plant Assemblages from Northern Britain (1976) |
| Doctoral advisor | William Gilbert Chaloner |
Andrew Cunningham Scott (born 16 February 1952) is a British geologist, and professor emeritus at Royal Holloway University of London. [1] He won the 2007 Gilbert H. Cady Award from the Geological Society of America for outstanding contributions to coal geology. [2] He is widely regarded an expert on wildfire and charcoal and has highlighted the role of fire in deep time. He also contributes as a palaeobotanist and science communicator.
Scott was educated at Cannon Lane Primary School, (Pinner); St. Martins School, Northwood; Merchant Taylors' School, Northwood; and the University of London, where he obtained a BSc (Bedford College) and a PhD (Birkbeck College) studying under William Gilbert Chaloner. His thesis concerned the palaeoecology of Carboniferous Coal Measure plants. After a 2-year post-doctoral fellowship at Trinity College Dublin, he returned to England to take up a lectureship in Geology at Chelsea College, University of London. During this period, his research concentrated on the Lower Carboniferous (Mississippian) floras of Scotland including those from the Pettycur Volcanics, Bearsden (associated with the Bearsden Shark collected by Stan Wood), Oxroad Bay and localities in Berwickshire and East Lothian as well as the East Kirkton Quarry (associated with famous fossil vertebrates including Westlothiana).
In 1985, the geology departments at Chelsea College and Bedford College merged to form a new department at Royal Holloway, University of London. He was awarded a personal chair in 1996, becoming Professor of Applied Palaeobotany. [3] During the 1990s, he worked on Drawings and Prints in the Royal Library that had been collected by Cassiano dal Pozzo. [3] These were part of a project undertaken by Federico Cesi and Francesco Stelluti, founders of the Accademia dei Lincei. His book on the drawing of fossil woods was launched by Charles, Prince of Wales at Windsor Castle in 2001 [4]
From 1998 to 2006, he was the Director of Science Communication. In 2002 he was awarded a D.Sc. from the University of London for his published research. In 2003, he was made an Honorary Professor at Jilin University, Changchun, China. He was a visiting professor at Yale University in 2006–2007 and a visiting fellow at Berkeley College. During this period, his research concentrated on the occurrence of wildfire in deep time. He also became involved with the Pyrogeography research group at the University of California, Santa Barbara and published several important papers and a text-book on Fire on Earth. [5] [6] In 2012 he became a distinguished research fellow and was awarded a Leverhulme Fellowship and became the Emeritus Professor of Geology in 2014. [7] . He was appointed Distinguished Research Professor in 2023.
Scott has been involved in many radio broadcasts for broadcasters around the world including the BBC, such as In Our Time episodes on Early Geology [8] and Catastrophism [9] and on the Forum on “Fire: How climate change is altering our attitudes to wildfire" [10] and was also the subject of a BBC documentary about his research on coal for screenhouse productions and the Open University. He has written articles on geology stamps for several publications including Stamp Magazine and has had a long-term collaboration with the artist Nick Shrewing working on geological stamp designs for a number of countries including the Solomon Islands, Barbados, Ascension Island and Tristan da Cunha.
In 2022 his fire research was featured in a major exbibition in Tokyo in the Museum of Science and Nature ( https://www.kahaku.go.jp/english/event/2022/11wildfire/ ). He has been involved in two papers from the Parliamentary Office of Science and Technology (POSTnotes 603 (2019) Climate change and UK Wildfire ( https://post.parliament.uk/research-briefings/post-pn-0603/ ) , POSTnote 717 (2024) Wildfire risks to UK landscapes ( https://researchbriefings.files.parliament.uk/documents/POST-PN-0717/POST-PN- 0717.pdf ). He has collaborated on the use of plants, minerals and burnt substances in Medieval medicine funded by the Wellcome Trust ( https://wellcome.org/research-funding/funding-portfolio/funded-grants/plants-and-minerals-byzantine-popular-pharmacy-new ).
He has published on family history and on the history of the Scottish Village of Lemahagow [11] .
Scott is the recipient of several awards including the Presidents Award of the Geological Society of London and the Palaeontological Society and the Gilbert H. Cady Award from the Geological Society of America [2] , and in 2025 the Richardson Award from the Geologists Association [12] . He is also a Fellow of the Geological Society of London, Fellow of the Geological Society of America, Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts, Fellow of the Higher Education Academy and is a Chartered Geologist.
He is married to his wife Anne and has a son and a daughter.
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