SECOND World War code-breaker Alan Turing will be the next person to feature on the £50 note, the Bank of England has confirmed.
The selection of the mathematician, who is often credited as being the father of computer science, was announced at the Science and Industry Museum in Manchester.
Bank of England Governor Mark Carney, who made the announcement, also revealed the imagery depicting Turing and his work that will be used for the reverse of the note.
The new polymer £50 note is expected to enter circulation by the end of 2021. It will feature a quote from Turing, given in an interview to the Times newspaper on June 11 1949: “This is only a foretaste of what is to come, and only the shadow of what is going to be.”
Turing was chosen following the bank’s character selection process which included advice from scientific experts.
In 2018, the Banknote Character Advisory Committee chose to celebrate the field of science on the £50 note and members of the public were invited to put forward names over a six-week period.
The bank received a total of 227,299 nominations, covering 989 eligible figures.
A shortlist was then drawn up by the committee, with the governor making the final decision.
The bank said the shortlist demonstrated the breadth of scientific achievement in the UK, from astronomy to physics, chemistry to palaeontology and mathematics to biochemistry.
Those considered alongside Turing were Stephen Hawking, Mary Anning, Paul Dirac, Rosalind Franklin, William Herschel and Caroline Herschel, Dorothy Hodgkin, Ada Lovelace and Charles Babbage, James Clerk Maxwell, Srinivasa Ramanujan, Ernest Rutherford, and Frederick Sanger.
Carney 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 war hero, Alan Turing’s contributions were far-ranging
and path-breaking. Turing is a
giant on whose shoulders so many now stand.”
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