Robert Falcon Scott was born in Plymouth - and is nowadays referred to simply as "Scott of the Antarctic."

Robert Falcon Scott CVO (6 June 1868 - 29 March 1912) was a British Royal Naval officer and explorer who led two expeditions to the Antarctic regions: the Discovery Expedition, 1901-04, and the ill-fated Terra Nova Expedition, 1910-13. During this second venture Scott led a party of five which reached the South Pole on 17 January 1912, to find that they had been preceded by Roald Amundsen's Norwegian party in an unsought "race for the Pole". On their return journey Scott and his four comrades all perished because of a combination of exhaustion, hunger and extreme cold.

Before his appointment to lead the Discovery Expedition, Scott had followed the conventional career of a naval officer in peacetime Victorian Britain, where opportunities for career advancement were both limited and keenly sought after by ambitious officers. It was the chance for personal distinction that led Scott to apply for the Discovery command, rather than any predilection for polar exploration. However, having taken this step, his name became ever after associated with the Antarctic, the field of work to which he remained committed during the final twelve years of his life.

Following the news of his death, Scott became an iconic British hero, a status maintained for more than 50 years. In the closing decades of the twentieth century, however, in a more sceptical age, the legend was reassessed. From a previously unassailable position, Scott became a figure of controversy, with questions raised about his competence and character.

Scott was undoubtedly capable of commanding great personal loyalty. Some were prepared to follow him anywhere and did so. "He wouldn’t ask you to do anything he wasn’t prepared to do himself", said Terra Nova stoker William Burton. Tom Crean, the Irishman who accompanied Scott on both the Discovery and Terra Nova Expeditions, was more effusive: "I loved every hair of his head". But his relations with others, including Ernest Shackleton, Lawrence Oates, and his expedition second-in-commands, were less easy. Despite his considerable exploration experience, something of the resourceful amateur remained with him until the end. For example his reluctance to rely on dogs, despite the advice of expert ice travellers such as Nansen, has been cited as a critical factor that lost him the race to the pole and, ultimately, the lives of all his party.