Alan Turing, a pioneering World War II-era codebreaker whose efforts helped win the war, will be commemorated on Britain’s highest-value banknote.
It was announced Monday that Turing would be featured on the 50 pound British banknote. Governor of the Bank of England, Mark Carney, described him in a statement as “a giant on whose shoulders so many now stand.”
“Alan Turing was an outstanding mathematician whose work has had an enormous impact on how we live today,” Carney said. “As the father of computer science and artificial intelligence, as well as a war hero, Alan Turing’s contributions were far ranging and path breaking.”
Turing is best known for his Nazi codebreaking work, which he did while working at the secret Bletchley Park center. He created the “Turing bombe” in the early stages of the war, which is considered a forerunner to the modern computer. The technology was pivotal to cracking Nazi communications encoded through the Enigma machine, drastically speeding up the time it took to decode intercepted messages.
He was also an early pioneer in the field of artificial intelligence, developing the “Turing Test,” which is used to gauge a machine’s ability to exhibit intelligent behavior equivalent to that of a human being.
Turing’s accomplishments were not celebrated during his lifetime. In 1952 he was convicted for having a homosexual relationship. He was forced to take female hormones and was chemically castrated. In 2009, he received a posthumous apology from the British government and in 2013 he was given a royal pardon.
The new note will be made of durable polymer instead of paper, the last British banknote to make the transition. It will enter circulation in 2021 and feature of photo of scientist along with a quote from Turing, “This is only a foretaste of what is to come, and only the shadow of what is going to be.”
