Gay codebreaker Alan Turing is one of the frontrunners to become the official face of the £50 note.
Bank of England Governor Mark Carney announced a public contest to find a figure from the world of science to replace inventor James Watt on the redesigned bank note.
Computer scientist and codebreaker Alan Turing is among the frontrunners for the honour, alongside mathematician Ada Lovelace and physicist Stephen Hawking.
Alan Turing was a brilliant English mathematician who helped allied armies to break the encrypted messages from Nazis during World War II, the famous Enigma Code. Turing is also considered the father of modern mathematics and computers.
Turing was convicted of ‘gross indecency’ in 1952 after having sex with a man, and was chemically castrated, barred from working for Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ), and driven to suicide in jail.
Everybody can make nominations online for the figure to appear on the note here.
Turing's family delivered a petition to Downing Street,
signed by more than half a million people asking the pardon
of gay men convicted of "gross indecency" after WWII.
The posthumous pardon came at 2017 with Policing and Crime Act
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