London: Computer pioneer and World War II codebreaker Alan Turing will feature on the new £50 polymer note, the Bank of England announced on Monday after it selected him from a shortlist that included famed Indian mathematician Srinivasa Ramanujan and British theoretical physicist Stephen Hawking.
Bank of England Governor Mark Carney made the announcement at the Science and Industry Museum in Manchester. He also revealed the imagery depicting Alan Turing and his work that will be used for the reverse of the note.
The new polymer 50 pound note is expected to enter circulation by the end of 2021. Turing was chosen following the Bank's character selection process including advice from scientific experts, the BoE said in a statement.
In 2018, the Banknote Character Advisory Committee chose to celebrate the field of science on the 50 pound note and this was followed by a six week public nomination period. The Bank received a total of 227,299 nominations, covering 989 eligible characters, it said.
The Committee considered all the nominations before deciding on a shortlist of 12 options, which were put to Governor Carney for him to make the final decision. "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," Carney commented on the 41-year-old computer pioneer who died in 1954.
Turing provided the theoretical underpinnings for the modern computer. While best known for his work devising code-breaking machines during World War II, Turing played a pivotal role in the development of early computers first at the National Physical Laboratory and later at the University of Manchester.