The Bank of England has unveiled Alan Turing, a computer scientist and mathematician, as the face of the newly designed £50 banknote for his remarkable work during WWII in helping to crack the German Code.
The new note wil l begin circulating by June 23 and will embodify Turing’s life’s work such as the bombe device which he used to decrypt during the WWII. A tape with Turing’s birthday in binary and a table and mathematical formulae from one of his papers.
Alan Turing is widely celebrated in the software engineering world, many noteworthy innovations have been monumental in the development of algorithms that are still in use or influenced software development of today.
He was also persecuted by the UK government for homosexuality and was charged with gross indecency. He eventually died after getting poisoned by an apple laced with cyanide under mysterious circumstances.
It is believed that placing Turing on the face of the £50 note will acknowledge his immense contribution to science.