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New £50 note will feature a British scientist...

more likely it will be drug dealers, cash in hand type tradespeople and people buying 2nd hand cars.
Haha yes indeed. I remember working for this guy years ago, we were building his brother's extension and he worked for HSBC. Subsequently we got paid at the end of the week with nice shiny new £50 notes. The staff at the local pub used to look downcast when we walked through the door at the end of the week and kinda got fed up with having to ask us if they were real.
 
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The only person I knew who ever had £50.00 notes was a show off, he liked to buy rounds in the local pub and pay with a 50 .. the only person I have come across like that.
I have a client who usually pays me with a fifty. Because I don't want to be That Bloke, and because some places are quite touchy about accepting them, I'm building up a little collection. I'll have to buy loads of drugs, or something...
 
The more I think about this, the more likely I think it will be Hawking. It *could* be Turing, and they could go for a female, but I just think it's by far the easiest and most popular option.
This isn’t a vote as part of a popularity contest. This is a nomination process. Anyone can nominate as many people as they like. A committee at the BoE will then produce a shortlist from that and the then governor will make a final choice. More here.
 
This isn’t a vote as part of a popularity contest. This is a nomination process. Anyone can nominate as many people as they like. A committee at the BoE will then produce a shortlist from that and the then governor will make a final choice. More here.

Yes, but I think for them, Hawking will be the easiest option so I think that is who they will choose.
 
Thinking about this I now propose Turing, his work obviously provided the biggest benefit to the entire world.
 
The more I think about this, the more likely I think it will be Hawking. It *could* be Turing, and they could go for a female, but I just think it's by far the easiest and most popular option.

Turing would be a good choice.

I’m looking forward to all of the usual twats objecting when the scientist is a woman, gay, or ideally both.

Alex
 
Turing would be a good choice.

I’m looking forward to all of the usual twats objecting when the scientist is a woman, gay, or ideally both.

Alex

TBH it would be better to put an account of what happened to Turing on the back rather than his picture, that way the people who go on about how that could never happen today might stop and think before they actually do it.
 
The more I think about this, the more likely I think it will be Hawking. It *could* be Turing, and they could go for a female, but I just think it's by far the easiest and most popular option.
The more I think about it, the less likely I think it will be Hawking, tbh. Brilliant as he was, proposing Hawking radiation and the rest of his achievements, if you're making a judgement based on the genius of their work, you'd plump for Maxwell or Dirac ahead of him, no? If you're making a judgement based on brilliance plus a historical corrective for someone underappreciated in their lifetime, you'd plump for Turing or Franklin ahead of him. My money would be on Rosalind Franklin.
 
The more I think about it, the less likely I think it will be Hawking, tbh. Brilliant as he was, proposing Hawking radiation and the rest of his achievements, if you're making a judgement based on the genius of their work, you'd plump for Maxwell or Dirac ahead of him, no? If you're making a judgement based on brilliance plus a historical corrective for someone underappreciated in their lifetime, you'd plump for Turing or Franklin ahead of him. My money would be on Rosalind Franklin.

Wow, I'd never heard of Dirac so it's fascinating reading up on him. Lovelace although special in being a women doesn't appear a particular genius (does that matter?). Same could be true of Franklin perhaps because of a life cut short. I can't comment on the other female scientists.

I'd go for Turing especially given his abominable treatment by the state. It's a state token after all. Generally someone who hasn't died in the last 50yrs preferably. With Science the winds can change quickly and people can fall out of the big picture.
 
I was going to suggest Roger Penrose but I am shocked after looking him up to see that he’s still going strong at 87 years of age
 
In which case, here are some special people I have come across in my studies in psychology:

John Bowlby - Wikipedia -- he really revolutionised how we view child development. Many people have heard of Harry Harlow's monkey experiments into attachment theory but Bowlby got there first and with considerably more compassion and rigour. He inspired worldwide a new way of looking at how we should bring up children. Before Bowlby, the attitude was ignore babies lest they be spoilt. After Bowlby, we realised that this was a good way of rearing psychopaths.

Susan Sutherland Isaacs - Wikipedia -- another titan of child development. She realised that independent play was a crucial part of learning how to deal with the world. Like Bowlby, Isaacs truly changed the world.

Melanie Klein - Wikipedia -- took psychoanalysis into the realm of children, thus opening up the idea that a child's world is distinct from that of an adult and crucial to study in its own right.

Donald Broadbent - Wikipedia -- an astounding thinker who pretty much single-handedly invented the study of attention (alright, that's hyperbole -- all scientists build on other work, but Broadbent's innovations were myriad and brilliant). As if that wasn't enough, he leapt from that to invent whole new areas of cognitive psychology.

Anne Treisman - Wikipedia -- whilst we're on the subject of attention, Treisman needs a mention. We owe a lot of what we know to how human beings filter and select items for attention (and ignore others) to Anne Treisman, who sadly died just this year.

All brilliant British scientists of the 21st century (and beyond). If I had to choose one -- which is tough -- I'd probably go for Bowlby, because he really did silently change the world in a really fundamental way. But any of them would grace the £50.
 
The committee which draws up the shortlist will include space scientist Maggie Aderin-Pocock, author and genetics expert Emily Grossman, editor of the British Journal for the History of Science Simon Schaffer, and theoretical and particle physicist Simon Singh.

Never fear, Thatcher-haters. She will be nowhere near that shortlist.
 
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