The process of selecting Turing started when we asked the UK public to “Think Science” and put forward nominations for scientists they would like to see appear on a banknote. We had an overwhelming response, with nearly 250,000 members of the public making a nomination. I’m glad that so many of you wanted to be a part of this process. There's something of the character of a nation in its money, and we are right to consider and celebrate the people on our banknotes. We were aided in the selection process by our Banknote Character Advisory Committee, made up of seven external members and two members of Bank staff. The Committee had the unenviable task of narrowing down the nearly 1,000 unique nominations to a shortlist of just 12. Each of those on the shortlist were hugely significant in their own right, and collectively the shortlist celebrates the important contributions scientists have made to our nation's history, and indeed, our leading position in scientific research. However, it was Alan Turing who was ultimately selected. I’d like to reflect on why that was. I think, at the root, it’s because Alan represents something of which we’re all very proud. Even if we can’t precisely articulate the reason. I believe that part of the answer lies in him being someone who, not content with abstract ideas, applied himself to the physical embodiment of those ideas. And from his sheer force of will, came enormous leaps of progress.
Perhaps it is because we now find ourselves confronted by a pandemic and climate change, and relying greatly on original thought, and scientific innovation, that Turing's values and achievements resonate so strongly with us today. Banknote character ‐ speech by Andrew Bailey | Bank of England  Page 2  Banknote features And we’ve tried to reflect those many achievements on this new note, which I’m very pleased to now unveil. Turing is perhaps best known for his code breaking work at Bletchley Park during World War Two. Here, far from being the solitary genius he is sometimes caricatured as, Turing led a team of codebreakers who designed a machine which could be used to decipher German military codes, something once thought impossible. This machine was known as The Bombe, and the technical drawings for it are featured here on the note. Until Turing and his colleagues invented this machine, British Intelligence had employed codebreakers to crack these German cyphers manually. But the sheer complexity of the codes meant they had little success. The early computers which Turing helped design would decipher some of these codes in as little as 15 minutes, giving the allied forces an invaluable military advantage. Historians have credited this work that Turing led at Bletchley Park, with shortening the war by as much as 2 years, saving many millions of lives in the process. But Alan Turing’s contributions to the field of computing start even before his wartime efforts.