Sir Peter Scott was among the most widely recognised British wildlife artists of the twentieth century, though his life reached well beyond the studio. Born in London on 14 September 1909, he was the only child of the Antarctic explorer Captain Robert Falcon Scott and the sculptor Kathleen Scott, and he was brought up towards the natural world that would occupy him for the rest of his life. He was educated at Oundle School and at Trinity College, Cambridge, where he turned from natural sciences to the history of art, before studying painting at the State Academy in Munich and then at the Royal Academy Schools in London. From 1933 he exhibited regularly in the capital, most often at Ackermann's Gallery, painting the ducks, geese and swans he watched at close hand, and in 1964 he founded the Society of Wildlife Artists and became its first president. It was in conservation that Scott made his broadest mark. In 1946 he founded the Severn Wildfowl Trust at Slimbridge in Gloucestershire, now the Wildfowl & Wetlands Trust, building a centre for research, breeding and public education that continues today. His work became international in 1961, when he co-founded the World Wide Fund for Nature, then the World Wildlife Fund, and designed its panda emblem, now among the most recognised symbols of the conservation movement. Among the species he helped to save from extinction was the Hawaiian goose, or nēnē, revived through a breeding programme at Slimbridge. Through a long run of books and BBC television programmes he became one of the country's best-known advocates for wildlife, carrying the case for conservation to a wide audience long before it was a common concern. He was knighted in 1973, the first person honoured specifically for services to conservation, was appointed a Companion of Honour in 1987, and was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society in the same year. He died in Bristol on 29 August 1989, leaving a body of work, and a network of institutions, that continue to shape how wildlife is painted, studied and protected.