LONDON (AP) – The rainbow flag flew proudly over the Bank of England on Thursday in the heart of London’s financial district to commemorate Alan Turing, the new face of the UK £ 50 banknote.
The design of the banknote was unveiled before it was officially released to the public on June 23, Turing’s birthday. The £ 50 bill is the most valuable denomination in circulation, but it is rarely used during day-to-day transactions, especially during the coronavirus pandemic, as digital payments have increasingly replaced the use of cash.
The new banknote, which is loaded with high-level security features and is made of longer-lasting polymer, completes the bank’s refusal of its paper currencies in recent years. Turing’s image joins that of Winston Churchill on the five-pound note, the novelist Jane Austen on the 10-pound note, and the artist JMW Turner on the 20-pound note.
Turing was selected as the new face of the £ 50 banknote in 2019 following a public nomination process that garnered around 250,000 votes, a partial recognition of the discrimination he faced as a gay man after the war.
Among his many achievements, Turing is most famous for the key role he played in violating Nazi Germany’s Enigma code during World War II. It was believed that the code could not be broken because the cipher was constantly changing. Historians say breaking the code could have helped shorten the war by at least two years, saving millions of lives.
“There is something about a nation’s character in its money and we are right to consider and celebrate the people on our banknotes,” said Bank of England Governor Andrew Bailey.
“Turing is best known for his code-breaking work at Bletchley Park, which helped end World War II. However, in addition, he was a leading mathematician, a developing biologist and a pioneer in computer science. He was also gay and treated terribly as a result. “
During World War II, Turing worked at the secret code breaking center Bletchley Park, where he helped break the Enigma by creating the “Turing bomb,” a forerunner of modern computers. He also developed the “Turing Test” to measure artificial intelligence.
After the war, she was sued for her relationship with a man in Manchester and offered a choice between imprisonment and probation provided she was subjected to female hormonal treatment, which at the time was used as a form of chemical castration.
His conviction led to the removal of the security clearance and meant that he could no longer work for the government communications headquarters (GCHQ). He died at the age of 41 in 1954, after eating an apple with cyanide.
Turing received a posthumous apology from the British government in 2009 and a royal pardon in 2013. Four years later, the Turing Act was passed, which forgave gay men with previous convictions.
Actor and author Stephen Fry said Turing’s latest commemoration marks another step in the long-held recognition of “this very great man” of the nation, whose “talents have varied greatly.”
In a YouTube video posted by the bank, Fry outlined the levels of discrimination and “barbaric punishments” that gay men faced in the years after World War II.
“Alan Turing was among the thousands of men who were harassed and harassed by the authorities,” he said. “Not only in terms of their hostile attitude towards sexuality, but also in the fanatical belief that there is a link between homosexuality and communism.”
Over the past decade, Turing’s life has become known to a much wider audience, especially following the 2014 film “The Imitation Game,” which saw Benedict Cumberbatch play Turing.
As part of the design of the new note – which includes a metal hologram that switches between the words “Fifty” and “Pounds” when the note is tilted and the image of a microchip – the bank collaborated with the British intelligence and security agency GCHQ to create the Challenge Turing, a set of 12 puzzles
GCHQ said the full challenge could take an experienced seven-hour puzzle to complete and could even leave Turing “scratching his head, though we doubt it very much.”
Turing’s great-grandson, James Turing, who runs the Turing Trust which reconditioned computers in the UK for use in African schools, told BBC Radio that the puzzle was “a wonderful recognition and somewhat reminiscent of the famous crossword puzzle they used to recruit at Bletchley Park at the time”