Petition to Have Gay WWII Code Breaker on Face of 10 Pounds Bill
A petition to put an image of gay computer pioneer and Second World War code-breaker Alan Turing on the next £10 note has been launched, securing over a thousand signatures in its first day.
The petition, published on the government’s e-petitions website, reads: “Alan Turing is a national hero. His contribution to computer science, and hence to the life of the nation and the world, is incalculable. The ripple-effect of his theories on modern life continues to grow, and may never stop.
“The current Bank of England £10 notes are Series E, but Series F notes are already in circulation for some denominations. We therefore call upon the Treasury to request the Bank of England to consider depicting Alan Turing when Series F £10 banknotes are designed.”
Historical figures have featured on the reverse of banknotes since the 1970s and the final choice for whom to represent lies with the Governor of the Bank of England.
The Bank of England’s website says: “It is usual practice to consider a number of probable candidates all of whom have been selected because of their indisputable contribution to their particular field of work and about whom there exists sufficient material on which to base a banknote design.”
The Bank of England publishes a list of public figures whose names have been suggested for inclusion on bank notes, which already features Alan Turing.
Turing died in 1954, ingesting cyanide two years after being prosecuted and chemically castrated for homosexuality.
A recent petition calling for him to be pardoned was rejected however, as the World War Two codebreaker had been “properly convicted of what at the time was a criminal offence”, Justice Minister Lord McNally said, though it “now seems both cruel and absurd”.
A petition to put an image of gay computer pioneer and Second World War code-breaker Alan Turing on the next £10 note has been launched, securing over a thousand signatures in its first day.
The petition, published on the government’s e-petitions website, reads: “Alan Turing is a national hero. His contribution to computer science, and hence to the life of the nation and the world, is incalculable. The ripple-effect of his theories on modern life continues to grow, and may never stop.
“The current Bank of England £10 notes are Series E, but Series F notes are already in circulation for some denominations. We therefore call upon the Treasury to request the Bank of England to consider depicting Alan Turing when Series F £10 banknotes are designed.”
Historical figures have featured on the reverse of banknotes since the 1970s and the final choice for whom to represent lies with the Governor of the Bank of England.
The Bank of England’s website says: “It is usual practice to consider a number of probable candidates all of whom have been selected because of their indisputable contribution to their particular field of work and about whom there exists sufficient material on which to base a banknote design.”
The Bank of England publishes a list of public figures whose names have been suggested for inclusion on bank notes, which already features Alan Turing.
Turing died in 1954, ingesting cyanide two years after being prosecuted and chemically castrated for homosexuality.
In 2009, after a campaign led by Richard Dawkins, Stephen Fry, Peter Tatchell and supported by PinkNews.co.uk, 30,805 people demanded that the then prime minister Gordon Brown issue an apology for Turing’s treatment on behalf of the British government. Mr Brown agreed to do so.
A recent petition calling for him to be pardoned was rejected however, as the World War Two codebreaker had been “properly convicted of what at the time was a criminal offence”, Justice Minister Lord McNally said, though it “now seems both cruel and absurd”.
http://www.pinknews.co.uk
...a quite brilliant mathematician... whose unique contribution helped to turn the tide of war... horrifying that he was treated so inhumanely...Personal statement of apology by the Prime Minister, Gordon Brown, 10 September 2009.
1912 (23 June): Birth, Paddington, London1926-31: Sherborne School
1930: Death of friend Christopher Morcom
1931-34: Undergraduate at King's College, Cambridge University
1932-35: Quantum mechanics, probability, logic
1935: Elected fellow of King's College, Cambridge
1936: The Turing machine, computability, universal machine
1936-38: Princeton University. Ph.D. Logic, algebra, number theory
1938-39: Return to Cambridge. Introduced to German Enigma cipher machine
1939-40: The Bombe, machine for Enigma decryption
1939-42: Breaking of U-boat Enigma, saving battle of the Atlantic
1943-45: Chief Anglo-American crypto consultant. Electronic work.
1945: National Physical Laboratory, London
1946: Computer and software design leading the world.
1947-48: Programming, neural nets, and artificial intelligence
1948: Manchester University
1949: First serious mathematical use of a computer
1950: The Turing Test for machine intelligence
1951: Elected FRS. Non-linear theory of biological growth
1952: Arrested as a homosexual, loss of security clearance
1953-54: Unfinished work in biology and physics
1954 (7 June): Death (suicide) by cyanide poisoning, Wilmslow, Cheshire.
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