Percivall Pott (6 January 1714, in London – 22 December 1788) was an English surgeon, one of the founders of orthopaedics, and the first scientist to demonstrate that cancer may be caused by an environmental carcinogen, namely chimney sweeps' carcinoma. Many diseases are his namesake including Pott's fracture, Pott's disease of the spine, and Pott's puffy tumour. It is believed that Pott's standard of living contributed to the rise of the surgeon within social standings.

Percivall Pott was born the son of Percivall Pott senior in London. His father died when he was a child, but Joseph Wilcocks, Bishop of Rochester, who was a relative of his mother, paid for his education. He served his apprenticeship with Edward Nourse, assistant surgeon to St Bartholomew's Hospital, and in 1736 was admitted to the Barbers' Company and licensed to practice.

He became assistant surgeon to St Bartholomew's in 1744 and full surgeon from 1749 till 1787. As the first surgeon of his day in England, excelling even his pupil, John Hunter, on the practical side, Pott introduced various important innovations in procedure, doing much to abolish the extensive use of escharotics and the cautery that was prevalent when he began his career.

In 1756, Pott sustained a broken leg after a fall from his horse. It is often assumed that his injury was the same one that later came to be known as Pott's fracture, but in reality, Pott's broken leg was a much more serious compound fracture of the tibia. As he lay in the muck, he sent a servant to buy a door from a nearby construction site, then had himself placed on the door and taken home. Surgeons cleaned the wound and discussed amputation, an operation which at the time had a very high rate of failure, as it often led to sepsis and death, but Pott prevailed on them to splint the leg, and he ultimately recovered completely.

Percivall Pott's dedication to his patients and standard of care garnered Pott high praise and fame. He is generally regarded as one of the two greatest surgeons of the 18th century along with his student John Hunter. Amid the patient wards, Pott also honed his writing skills and believed in patient education. He would distribute pamphlets, noting his observations and thoughts on topics ranging from "head injuries, hydrocele, fistula, rupture, and fracture", in the hospital environment. These pamphlets were in high demand and would sell for more than one shilling and sixpence. Between the 1760s and the 1770s over fourteen of Pott's pamphlets were in circulation.

In 1769 Pott published Some Few Remarks upon Fractures and Dislocations. The book was translated into French and Italian and had a far-reaching influence in Britain and France. His name was written in the annals of medicine, by first describing arthritic tuberculosis of the spine (Pott's disease). He gave an excellent clinical description in his Remarks on that Kind of Palsy of the Lower Limbs. Among his other writings, the most noteworthy are A Treatise on Ruptures (1756), and Chirurgical Observations.

In 1765, he was elected Master of the Company of Surgeons, the forerunner of the Royal College of Surgeons of England.

In 1775, Pott found an association between exposure to soot and a high incidence of scrotal cancer later found to be a type of squamous cell carcinoma in chimney sweeps. This disease, later termed chimney sweeps' carcinoma due to Pott's investigation, was the first occupational link to cancer, and Pott became the first person to associate a malignancy with an environmental carcinogen, implicating chimney soot as a direct contact carcinogen to skin.