The Governor of the Bank of England announced that the pioneering computer scientist Alan Turing will appear on the reverse of the new polymer £50 note to be issued from next year. The image to be used on the reverse of the note is above.
The image will cover about 2/3rds of the back with the rest being taken by a panel including a clear panel “watermark” and holograms. Just the main image was released today with the design of the whole note still being undertaken. The style will be similar to the £10 note which features the author Jane Austin.
The £50 note will be the largest of the new polymer notes, both in terms of value and size although smaller than the existing design. Bank of England notes are size and color coded, hence the predominance of red in the image.
The public were asked to nominate a scientist to feature on the new note. Nearly a quarter of a million people suggested 989 different names. These were reduced to a shortlist of 12. The final decision was made by the Governor, Mark Carney.
Turing is best known for his work to develop his “bombe” which enabled the fast decyphering of the German Enigma code. He and the rest of the decyrypters at their wartime home of Bletchley Park are thought to have shortened WWII by 2 years and consequently millions of lives were saved. He went on to help develop the first commercial electronic computer and developed and interest in mathematical aspects of biology, such as why a pine cone conforms to the Fibonacci. These aspects are recognised in the elements that make up the image.
- A photo of Turing taken in 1951 by Elliott & Fry which is part of the Photographs Collection at the National Portrait Gallery.
- A table and mathematical formulae from Turing’s seminal 1936 paper “On Computable Numbers, with an application to the Entscheidungsproblem ”Proceedings of the London Mathematical Society. This paper is widely recognised as being foundational for computer science. It sought to establish whether there could be a definitive method by which any theorem could be assessed as provable or not using a universal machine. It introduced the concept of a Turing machine as a thought experiment of how computers could operate.
- The Automatic Computing Engine (ACE) Pilot Machine which was developed at the National Physical Laboratoryas the trial model of Turing’s pioneering ACE design. The ACE was one of the first electronic stored-program digital computers.
- Technical drawings for the British Bombe, the machine specified by Turing and one of the primary tools used to break Enigma-enciphered messages during WWII.
- A quote from Alan Turing, givenin an interviewto The Times newspaper on 11 June 1949: “This is only a foretaste of what is to come, and only the shadow of what is going to be.”
- Turing’s signature from the visitor’s book at Bletchley Parkin 1947, where he worked during WWII.
- Ticker tape depicting Alan Turing’s birth date (23 June 1912) in binary code. The concept of a machine fed by binary tape featured in the Turing’s 1936 paper.
In his speech introducing the new design Mark Carney paid tribute to the effect his death had had and its importance for many gay men prosecuted before the reform of the law.
Turing also leaves a very different, though no less important, legacy. In March 1952, he was convicted of Gross Indecency for his private relationship with a man, avoiding prisononly by submitting to chemical castration. His security clearance was revoked for no reason other than his homosexuality, bringing to an end a promising post-war career as a consultant for GCHQ. He died shortly thereafter, on 7 June 1954, from cyanide poisoning.
In 2009, the then Prime Minister Gordon Brown made an official posthumous apology on behalf of the “government and all those who live freely thanks to Turing’s work” for his “utterly unfair” treatment. Turing received a royal pardon for his conviction in December 2013 and in 2017 the “Alan Turing Law” was passed, pardoning the nearly 50,000 men cautioned or convicted under now-rescinded historical legislation that outlawed homosexual acts.
In the UK today, we are fortunate to live in more inclusive times. Thanks to groups like the Sexual Law Reform Society and Stonewall, and initiatives like Pride, there has been huge progress towards ending the unfair treatment of people on the basis of sexual orientation and creating a society in which everyone can be their true selves without fear or favour.
The effect of that change was emphasised by the footnote attached to the last paragraph.
The Bank of England aims to be an LGBT+ inclusive employer, taking part in the London Pride parade every year and flying the pride flag atop its Threadneedle Street building. The Bank has a thriving LGBT+ & Allies Network which was launched in 2006 and now has around 350 members and allies. In 2018, the Bank supported the rollout of rainbow lanyards in the spirit of creating a visibly inclusive and supportive environment –these are now worn by more than 1,000 colleagues. We complete the Stonewall benchmarking exercise each year and were pleased to have increased our ranking by over 100 places in 201