James Floyd Scott FRS[1] (4 May 1942 – 6 April 2020)[2][3] was an American physicist and research director at the Cavendish Laboratory, University of Cambridge.

In 1972 he was appointed professor of physics at the University of Colorado, Boulder, where he established a research program investigating ferroelectrics using laser spectroscopy.

In 1984 he co-founded Symetrix Corporation to develop ferroelectric RAM (FRAM), which licensed its technology to Matsushita.

There followed appointments as Dean at the Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology (1992) and the University of New South Wales (1995).

In 1999, when he left Symetrix, he became professor of ferroics at the University of Cambridge where his research focused on multiferoed magnetoelectrics and nanometric methods.