Aeolienne
Well-Known Member
Forget the likes of William Wilberforce, Clive Sullivan and Graham Chapman … it has to be a scientist.
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£50 note: Who should be the face of the new banknote?
- Thread starter AGXStarseed
- Start date
Aeolienne
Well-Known Member
They'd have to die first - the rules state that the face of the banknote can't be a living person.
Aeolienne
Well-Known Member
(Not written by me)
New £50 note scientist nominations released
The Bank of England has released a list of scientists who have been nominated to feature on the new £50 note.
On the list are computing pioneers Alan Turing and Ada Lovelace, telephone inventor Alexander Graham Bell and astronomer Patrick Moore.
The Bank received 174,112 nominations, of which 114,000 met the eligibility criteria.
To be on the list, the individual must be real, deceased and have contributed to the field of science in the UK.
The list, which includes more than 600 men and almost 200 women, includes black holes expert Stephen Hawking, penicillin discoverer Alexander Fleming, father of modern epidemiology John Snow, naturalist and zookeeper Gerald Durrell, fossil pioneer Mary Anning, British-Jamaican business woman and nursing pioneer Mary Seacole and Margaret Thatcher, who was a scientist before becoming prime minister.
The late Baroness Thatcher studied chemistry at Oxford University and after graduating joined British Xylonite Plastics in 1947. Two years later she joined J. Lyons & Co in Hammersmith, west London, as a food research chemist in a role that involved testing the quality of cake-fillings and ice-cream, wrote biographer Hugo Young.
The politician has been credited with inventing soft serve ice cream - a product Lyons worked on - but "there is no firm evidence that Thatcher directly assisted in its invention", according to a Royal Society journal article.
Shortlist
Bookmakers William Hill have Stephen Hawking as the current favourite, with odds of 7/4, followed by Nobel-prize winning chemist Dorothy Hodgkin 4/1.
Ada Lovelace, Alan Turing and Alexander Fleming have odds of 5/1 and Rosalind Franklin, who made important contributions to the understanding of DNA, is at 6/1.
Further names will be considered up until nominations close on 14 December.
After that the decision will be considered by the Bank's Banknote Character Advisory Committee.
Analysis:
Paul Rincon, BBC News website science editor
The definition of eligibility for this list is pretty broad at the moment, but stricter criteria are likely to be applied once the names are considered by the Bank's committee.
Thus, while Margaret Thatcher's contributions to politics are considerable, it remains to be seen whether the committee will judge her an equally significant scientific figure.
Hers is just one of the names that some observers will think fall outside some of the stricter definitions of a scientist. But a broad definition of eligibility could assist the promotion of some figures that were overlooked by the establishment in their lifetimes, such as Mary Anning, who, without formal qualifications, helped document important fossil finds from southern England.
Those hoping for strong female contenders will find much to like about the list. But there are also inclusions that highlight the contributions of ethnic minorities and immigrants to British science.
The committee which draws up the shortlist will include space scientist Maggie Aderin-Pocock, author and genetics expert Emily Grossman, editor of the British Journal for the History of Science Simon Schaffer, and theoretical and particle physicist Simon Singh.
Nominations can include anyone who worked in any field of science including astronomy, biology, bio-technology, chemistry, engineering, mathematics, medical research, physics, technology or zoology.
Criminal use
There are currently 330 million £50 notes in circulation, with a combined value of £16.5bn, the Bank said.
A year ago there were doubts that the £50 note would continue to exist at all.
Fears that the largest denomination note was widely used by criminals and rarely for ordinary purchases prompted a government-led discussion on whether to abolish it.
The £50 note was described by Peter Sands, former chief executive of Standard Chartered bank, as the "currency of corrupt elites, of crime of all sorts and of tax evasion".
Nevertheless, in October, ministers announced plans for a new version of the note, to be printed in the UK, which they said would be plastic - so, more durable, secure and harder to forge.
Steam engine pioneers James Watt and Matthew Boulton appear on the current £50, issued in 2011.
Source: BBC News
New £50 note scientist nominations released
The Bank of England has released a list of scientists who have been nominated to feature on the new £50 note.
On the list are computing pioneers Alan Turing and Ada Lovelace, telephone inventor Alexander Graham Bell and astronomer Patrick Moore.
The Bank received 174,112 nominations, of which 114,000 met the eligibility criteria.
To be on the list, the individual must be real, deceased and have contributed to the field of science in the UK.
The list, which includes more than 600 men and almost 200 women, includes black holes expert Stephen Hawking, penicillin discoverer Alexander Fleming, father of modern epidemiology John Snow, naturalist and zookeeper Gerald Durrell, fossil pioneer Mary Anning, British-Jamaican business woman and nursing pioneer Mary Seacole and Margaret Thatcher, who was a scientist before becoming prime minister.
The late Baroness Thatcher studied chemistry at Oxford University and after graduating joined British Xylonite Plastics in 1947. Two years later she joined J. Lyons & Co in Hammersmith, west London, as a food research chemist in a role that involved testing the quality of cake-fillings and ice-cream, wrote biographer Hugo Young.
The politician has been credited with inventing soft serve ice cream - a product Lyons worked on - but "there is no firm evidence that Thatcher directly assisted in its invention", according to a Royal Society journal article.
Shortlist
Bookmakers William Hill have Stephen Hawking as the current favourite, with odds of 7/4, followed by Nobel-prize winning chemist Dorothy Hodgkin 4/1.
Ada Lovelace, Alan Turing and Alexander Fleming have odds of 5/1 and Rosalind Franklin, who made important contributions to the understanding of DNA, is at 6/1.
Further names will be considered up until nominations close on 14 December.
After that the decision will be considered by the Bank's Banknote Character Advisory Committee.
Analysis:
Paul Rincon, BBC News website science editor
The definition of eligibility for this list is pretty broad at the moment, but stricter criteria are likely to be applied once the names are considered by the Bank's committee.
Thus, while Margaret Thatcher's contributions to politics are considerable, it remains to be seen whether the committee will judge her an equally significant scientific figure.
Hers is just one of the names that some observers will think fall outside some of the stricter definitions of a scientist. But a broad definition of eligibility could assist the promotion of some figures that were overlooked by the establishment in their lifetimes, such as Mary Anning, who, without formal qualifications, helped document important fossil finds from southern England.
Those hoping for strong female contenders will find much to like about the list. But there are also inclusions that highlight the contributions of ethnic minorities and immigrants to British science.
The committee which draws up the shortlist will include space scientist Maggie Aderin-Pocock, author and genetics expert Emily Grossman, editor of the British Journal for the History of Science Simon Schaffer, and theoretical and particle physicist Simon Singh.
Nominations can include anyone who worked in any field of science including astronomy, biology, bio-technology, chemistry, engineering, mathematics, medical research, physics, technology or zoology.
Criminal use
There are currently 330 million £50 notes in circulation, with a combined value of £16.5bn, the Bank said.
A year ago there were doubts that the £50 note would continue to exist at all.
Fears that the largest denomination note was widely used by criminals and rarely for ordinary purchases prompted a government-led discussion on whether to abolish it.
The £50 note was described by Peter Sands, former chief executive of Standard Chartered bank, as the "currency of corrupt elites, of crime of all sorts and of tax evasion".
Nevertheless, in October, ministers announced plans for a new version of the note, to be printed in the UK, which they said would be plastic - so, more durable, secure and harder to forge.
Steam engine pioneers James Watt and Matthew Boulton appear on the current £50, issued in 2011.
Source: BBC News
Edward Jenner was a local boy to where I live. I've drunk in the pub he used to frequent
My vote would be for him for the millions of lives his work helped save or Alan Turing who kind of did the same with his enormous contribution to ending WW2 (and was persecuted ever after for being gay).
Aeolienne
Well-Known Member
(Not written by me)
In the scientific community, [Dorothy Hodgkin] is known as the founder of protein crystallography, a method of using x-rays to ‘see’ the structures of protein molecules. Her research was ground-breaking at the time, earning her the title of not only founder, but pioneer.
Hodgkin’s genius was to embrace new ideas and develop new techniques for each challenge. She was the first to solve the structures of important and increasingly complex molecules including cholesterol, penicillin and vitamin B-12, eventually resulting in the Nobel Prize.
Yet Hodgkin’s much-deserved recognition for her contributions to science was slow to materialise. Max Perutz, who had received the Nobel Prize for Chemistry two years before Hodgkin for his work on the structure of haemoglobin, said: “I felt embarrassed when I was awarded the Nobel Prize before Dorothy, whose great discoveries had been made with such fantastic skill and chemical insight and had preceded my own.”
Headlines at the time read ‘Oxford housewife wins Nobel Prize,’ and ‘Nobel prize for a wife from Oxford,’ focusing on her duties as a wife and mother of three rather than her role as a Professor at Oxford and a visionary and deeply revered research scientist.
Dorothy Hodgkin’s name recognition continues today to be hugely disproportionate to her importance to science, medicine and structural biology – the latter of which she helped to pioneer. Her life’s work was discovering the structure of insulin in 1969. The solution was the culmination of 34 years of research, and paved the way for the manufacture of synthetic insulin. She became the second woman (after Florence Nightingale) to receive the Order of Merit in 1965. She is also the only woman to receive the Royal Society’s Copley Medal.
Alongside these extraordinary achievements, she also campaigned tirelessly for world peace, nuclear disarmament and international scientific cooperation. She was widely admired for her dedicated mentoring and support of younger talent. She warmly welcomed international students, and she fostered connections with labs in China and India, promoting collaborative research.
Hodgkin challenged the practice of withdrawing research funding for graduate women who decided to marry. She donated a portion of her Nobel Prize winnings to provide on-site childcare at Somerville, now the Somerville Nursery, which continues to be one of the few provisions of its kind in Oxford.
It is also eye opening that throughout most of her life, Hodgkin was in significant physical pain. She was diagnosed with rheumatoid arthritis at the age of just 24. She would go on to lose much of the function in her feet and hands, forcing her to rely increasingly on a wheelchair. These disabilities did little to prevent her from continuing her research, including creating beautifully intricate drawings and models of the molecules she envisaged, despite her limited hand function and constant pain.
Aeolienne
Well-Known Member
AGXStarseed
Well-Known Member
Aeolienne
Well-Known Member
I don't usually have much truck with posthumous celebrity diagnoses, but on this occasion I'm more than happy to regard Alan Turing as a fellow Aspie. Plus I remember learning about Turing machines during my undergraduate joint maths & philosophy degree.A good choice.
They've already appeared on banknotes. Newton was on the last ever £1 note and Darwin was on the last £10 note.
Last edited:
Aeolienne
Well-Known Member
Those in favour of scientists on bank notes may be interested to know that the Swiss National Bank once devoted an entire series to them:
Sixth banknote series (1976)
Sixth banknote series (1976)
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