LONDON, June 23 (Reuters) - A new 50 pound ($70) banknote
featuring the mathematician and computer scientist Alan Turing
enters circulation in Britain on Wednesday, three months after
the Bank of England first unveiled the design https://www.bankofengland.co.uk/banknotes/polymer-50-pound-note.
Turing is best known in Britain for designing machines to
decrypt coded messages during World War Two, and before the war
his work laid the theoretical foundation for modern computer
science. Later he made discoveries in developmental biology.
"Placing him on this new banknote is a recognition of his
contributions to our society, and a celebration of his
remarkable life," BoE Governor Andrew Bailey said.
Turing was gay at a time when sex between men was illegal in
Britain. He received a criminal conviction as a result in 1952,
lost his security clearance, and died of cyanide poisoning less
than two years later in what coroners ruled was suicide.
Britain's government issued a posthumous pardon in 2013 and
Bailey said Turing had been treated appallingly while alive.
Britain's GCHQ spy agency, for whose predecessor Turing
worked in World War Two, unveiled an artwork in his honour on
Wednesday.
The new 50 pound banknote completes the BoE's transition
away from paper banknotes to those made out of a more durable
polymer or plastic.
Existing paper 50 pound banknotes will circulate alongside
the new polymer ones until the end of September 2022.
Fifty-pound notes account for 357 million of the over 4.5
billion Bank of England banknotes in circulation.
Lower-denomination notes are more popular for day-to-day
transactions.
($1 = 0.7179 pounds)
(Reporting by David Milliken, Editing by Paul Sandle)