She won a scholarship in 1876 to Hitchin College, soon to be renamed Girton College, of the University of Cambridge. Four years later she was placed eighth Wrangler but, as a woman, she was not allowed to graduate. Kenschaft quotes a report of the graduation ceremony:-
The man read out the names and when he came to 'eighth', before he could say the name, all the undergraduates called out 'Scott of Girton', and cheered tremendously, shouting her name over and over again with tremendous cheers and raising of hats.Scott continued research at Girton on algebraic geometry under Arthur Cayley's supervision receiving her doctorate in 1885. In this year Bryn Mawr College in Pennsylvania, United States opened. On Cayley's recommendation, Scott was appointed there and became the first head of the mathematics department there.
In 1894 Scott published an important textbook An Introductory Account of Certain Modern Ideas and Methods in Plane Analytical Geometry. In 1899 Scott became an editor of the American Journal of Mathematics and continued an impressive publication record. She also served on the Council of the American Mathematical Society and served as its vice-president in 1905.
Scott retired from teaching in 1924 and, after spending one further year at Bryn Mawr to complete the supervision of her last doctoral student, she returned to England.
Macaulay wrote in [4]:-
Miss Scott was a geometer who whenever possible brought to analytical geometry the full resources of pure geometrical reasoning.Alfred North Whitehead, speaking in 1922 at a meeting of the American Mathematical Society held at Bryn Mawr in Scott's honour, said:-
A friendship of peoples is the outcome of personal relations. A life's work such as that of Professor Charlotte Angas Scott is worth more to the world than many anxious efforts of diplomatists. She is a great example of the universal brotherhood of civilisations.