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# New £50 note to celebrate Alan Turing announced
- URL: https://www.scenemag.co.uk/new-50-note-to-celebrate-alan-turing-announced/
- Published: 2021-03-25T15:43:50.000Z
- Updated: 2021-03-25T15:43:50.000Z
- Description: The Bank of England has today announced its new £50 note, due to enter circulation on June 23, 2021, is to celebrate the work of Alan Turing
- Author: Graham Robson
- Tags: News, Alan Turing, LGBTQ

The **Bank of England** has today announced its new **£50 note**, due to enter circulation on **June 23**, 2021, is to celebrate the work of **Alan Turing**, the gay mathematician, computer scientist, logician, cryptanalyst, philosopher, and theoretical biologist.

![](https://www.scenemag.co.uk/content/images/wp-content/uploads/2021/03/untitled22-1.png)

Turing’s portrait is based on a photo taken in 1951 by **Elliott & Fry** which is part of the **Photographs Collection** at the **National Portrait Gallery**.

Alan Turing provided the theoretical underpinnings for the modern computer. While best known for his work devising code-breaking machines during WWII, Turing played a pivotal role in the development of early computers first at the **National Physical Laboratory** and later at the **University of Manchester**. He set the foundations for work on artificial intelligence by considering the question of whether machines could think.

Despite his ground-breaking work, Turing was prosecuted in 1952 for homosexual acts; the **Labouchere Amendment** of 1885 had mandated that ‘gross indecency’ was a criminal offence in the UK. Turing accepted chemical castration treatment, with DES, as an alternative to prison. He died in 1954, 16 days before his 42nd birthday, from cyanide poisoning.