George Ian Scott (15 March 1907 – 22 May 1989) was a Scottish ophthalmic surgeon who in 1954 became the first holder of the Forbes Chair of Ophthalmology at the University of Edinburgh.

[3] He chose to specialise in ophthalmology and trained at the Royal Infirmary of Edinburgh (RIE) under Harry M. Traquair, one of the pioneers of the scientific and clinical study of the visual fields.

Scott joined the succession of ophthalmic surgeons in Edinburgh who promoted the study of the visual pathway and the quantitative measurement of fields of vision.

In the course of his own training, Scott witnessed the Danish ophthalmologist Henning Rønne testing visual fields in the Copenhagen Rigshospitalet using the same matt black deeply-panelled double door which Bjerrum himself had used.

[4] In 1938 Scott was appointed ophthalmic surgeon at Leith Hospital in north Edinburgh, a post which had been held by Sinclair and Traquair earlier in the century.

There he worked closely alongside and formed an abiding friendship with Sir Stewart Duke-Elder, the leading figure in the specialty during and after the war.

In the era before sub-specialty interests became fully differentiated, he also published papers on the retinopathy of prematurity and the operative treatment of congenital ptosis, of the lacrimal drainage system and of chronic open angle glaucoma.

[6] He believed that the apprenticeship system was the only effective way of producing a competent ophthalmologist, after the trainee had preliminary broad exposure to general medicine, surgery and basic sciences.

[4] This was innovative thinking as ophthalmologists had tended to become isolated from other branches of medicine by often working in single specialty hospitals and by the unique terminology they used.

[1] Scott's research philosophy warned of the hazards of short-term projects by clinically inexperienced workers and called for intimate linkage between various departments of medicine and science, taking diabetes as an example.

The four earlier ophthalmologist presidents were Douglas Argyll Robertson, George Andreas Berry, A H H Sinclair and Harry Moss Traquair.