Robert Plot (13 December 1640 – 30 April 1696) was an English naturalist and antiquarian who was the first professor of chemistry at the University of Oxford and the first keeper of the Ashmolean Museum.

Plot subsequently taught and served as dean and vice principal at Magdalen Hall while preparing for his BCL and DCL, which he received in 1671 before moving to University College in 1676.

[3] In June 1674, with patronage from John Fell, the bishop of Oxford, and Ralph Bathurst, vice-chancellor of the university, Plot began studying and collecting artefacts throughout the nearby countryside, publishing his findings three years later in The Natural History of Oxford-shire.

[1] Plot resigned from his posts at Oxford in 1690, thereafter marrying Rebecca Burman of London and retiring to his property of Sutton Barne in his hometown of Borden, where he worked on The Natural History of Middlesex and Kent but never completed.

[1] Although able to go on an archaeological tour of Anglia in September 1695, Plot was greatly suffering from urinary calculi (kidney stones), and succumbed to his illness on 30 April 1696 aged 55.