Mathematician. In June 1751 he married Sarah Robinson, a sister of the bluestocking leader Elizabeth Montagu (1718-1800), but the marriage was dissolved the next year.1
Sometime sub-preceptor to George III. Commissioner of Excise (1758-1780). Member of the Royal Society. He had possibly been a student of the French mathematician Abraham de Moivre (1667-1754).
Scott was much respected in his own time and a close friend of poet James Thomson and historian Edward Gibbons.
- 1For Sarah Robinson, see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sarah_Scott.
Boswell visited Scott, who was a friend of Boswell's father, Lord Auchinleck, in London on November 21, 1762. Boswell wrote in his journal afterwards that Scott "was very kind and polite to me".
Part of the correspondence between Scott and James Burnett, Lord Monboddo was published in William Knight's Lord Monboddo and some of his contemporaries in 1900. It can usually be found for between £40 and £60 via AbeBooks.