The Bank of England unveil the new £50 banknote featuring the face of Alan Turing

Today the Bank of England has made public the new £50 banknote that will enter into circulation in the United Kingdom on June 23.

It is a historical event because on one of the sides appears the face of Alan Turing, the mathematician-hero who was persecuted after the war just because he was gay and was the first openly homosexual figure that shared this honor on a denomination of British currency together with the Queen

This choice was announced as early as July 2019, in agreement between the central bank and the Government in London: to replace the old image of the Matthew Boulton-James Watt combination on the 50 banknote, they chose Turing over the option of a female scientist or that of Stephen Hawking.

Born in London in 1912, Alan Turing entered history as being one of the most brilliant mathematicians of his generation, as well as a pioneer of computer science and Artificial Intelligence.

Not only that: during World War II he worked for Her Majesty’s intelligence in the cryptoanalysis center at Bletchley Park, inventing the techniques capable of breaking into Nazi Germany’s codes, including the ones that were generated by the almost unbreakable Enigma machine. His life - narrated in 2014 by the film ‘The Imitation Game’ - was also a tragedy, because of a homosexual orientation developed through suffering during his years of university studies in Cambridge and in a society that condemned any public display of it.

A ‘stain’, in the prejudices of the time, that cost him to be banned in spite of his colossal merits towards his country and the world, and the humiliating arrest for alleged ‘indecent behavior’ in 1952. After being released from prison, he committed suicide in 1954 at the age of 42.