Turing beats Thatcher (and others) to be the new face on the back of the £50 note
Yes! A victory for good sense at last!
Computer pioneer and codebreaker Alan Turing will feature on the new design of the Bank of England’s £50 note.
He is celebrated for his code-cracking work that proved vital to the Allies in World War Two.
The final decision was made by Bank of England governor Mark Carney. He said:
“Alan Turing was an outstanding mathematician whose work has had an enormous impact on how we live today.
“As the father of computer science and artificial intelligence, as well as a war hero, Alan Turing’s contributions were far ranging and path breaking. Turing is a giant on whose shoulders so many now stand.”
Among the other suggestions was former prime minister and bete noir of recent UK history, Margaret Thatcher, who was included in a shortlist of scientists for her work helping devise a way to inject air into ice cream, to make it seem there’s more of it than there actually is.
As I wrote a few months ago, “she used science to create a commercial cheat that would induce people to pay more for less.”
What a relief that Mr Carney ignored the easy political choice and instead lionised a man who was treated appallingly by the nation he helped save.
Convicted of homosexuality (it was a crime in those days), Alan Turing was ordered to take drugs that dulled his mind. The mental torment thise generated drove him to commit suicide.
We will never know what advances the UK lost as a result of the unreasonable prejudice and hatred of those primitive times. But at least this gesture goes some way towards acknowledging the debt we owe this late genius.
Source: New face of the Bank of England’s £50 note is revealed – BBC News
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It is easy to make this concession because you virtually never see such a note these days.
Its facile and mean to point this out. With the inflation Brexit is going to cause we may see a lot more of them. I am very glad that Alan Turing is being honoured in this way. A great man
That is very good news. Not that I’m likely to see a fifty quid note any time soon but never mind.
Tragic and ironic that as digital currency comes in £50 notes will go out.
i would have got rid of a 50 pound note with a picture of thatcher on ti as soon as I had it, if you could have found anyone willing to have a picture of such a cow
Apparently, the binary “spells” out his birth date… 104 years prior to the E.U. Referendum! I wonder what he would have thought of that. Stephen £awrence would have been nice but evidently, we’re not ready for that, yet.