Turing was chosen to grace the £50 note from a list of candidates including theoretical physicist Stephen Hawking and mathematician Ada Lovelace, CNN reports.
World
Posted:
4 years ago
Computing Genius and WWII Hero Alan Turing will be the Face of the £50 Note
Alan Turing, a crack code-breaker and visionary mathematician who was convicted under Victorian-era homophobic laws, will be the face of Britain's new £50 note.
Bank of England Governor Mark Carney announced Monday that Turing, who killed himself in 1954 after he was subjected to chemical castration, will appear on the new polymer note by the end of 2021.
"As the father of computer science and artificial intelligence, as well as war hero, Alan Turing's contributions were far-ranging and path-breaking," the central banker said.
The note's design reflects Turing's work. It features a ticker tape of binary code that spells out his birthday (June 23, 1912), and depicts the "British Bombe" machine that helped break the Enigma code.
It also includes a quote Turing gave to The Times newspaper in 1949: "This is only a foretaste of what is to come, and only the shadow of what is going to be."