(ANSA) - LONDON, MARCH 25 - The Bank of England today made public the prototype of the new £ 50 banknote destined to enter circulation in the United Kingdom from June 23rd.
This is an event in its own historical way since on one of the facades appears the face of Alan Turing, mathematician-hero persecuted after the war only because he is gay and the first openly homosexual person to share this honor on a British currency denomination with the queen (irreplaceable on the opposite face ).
The choice was announced as early as July 2019, in agreement between the central bank and the London government: that - to replace the old image of the Matthew Boulton-James Watt pairing on the 50 banknote - they preferred Turing to the option of a female scientist or that of Stephen Hawking.
Born in 1912 in London, Alan Turing went down in history as one of the most brilliant mathematicians of his generation, as well as a pioneer of computer science and artificial intelligence.
Not only that: during the Second World War he worked for Her Majesty's intelligence in the Bletchley Park cryptoanalysis center, devising techniques capable of breaking through Nazi Germany's ciphers, including those generated by the almost impenetrable Enigma machine.
But his life - told in 2014 by the film 'The Imitation Game' - was a tragedy, due to a homosexual inclination matured with suffering during the years of university studies in Cambridge in a society that still condemned any public manifestation.
A 'stain', in the prejudice of the time, which banned him in spite of the colossal merits in the face of his homeland and the world, as well as the humiliating arrest for 'indecent behavior' dated 1952. And that, after his release from prison, led him to suicide - in '54 - at not even 42 years old.
(HANDLE).