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The petition to put Alan Turing on the £10 note has received a response

The petition to put Alan Turing on the next £10 note has received over 22,000 signatures, which triggered a response from the Government:

The Bank of England has been including historic characters on its notes since 1970. The Bank welcomes suggestions from members of the public for individuals who might feature on future banknotes, and publishes a list of these suggestions on its website. These suggestions inform the process when a new note is under consideration.

The mathematician and cryptographer Alan Turing features on the list which can be found at:
http://www.bankofengland.co.uk/banknotes/Documents/about/banknote_names.pdf

This e-petition remains open to signatures and will be considered for debate by the Backbench Business Committee should it pass the 100 000 signature threshold.

So it might yet happen. The bit at the end about 100,000 signatures being enough to put the petition before the Backbench Business Committee is boilerplate for petitions on direct.gov.uk – I don’t think the Bank of England needs new legislation to dictate who goes on the notes.

As well as Turing, the names of three other mathematicians are on the list being considered by the Bank – Mary Somerville, Charles Babbage and James Clerk Maxwell.

via James Grime on Twitter

Put Alan Turing on bitcoins

Following the recent trend for Alan Turing petitions to be filed with the UK Government e-petitions website, and in particular the current Turing bank note petition, a new petition shows a satirical twist:

Alan Turing is a national hero. His contribution to computer science, and hence to the life of the nation and the world, is incalculable. The ripple-effect of his theories on modern life continues to grow, and may never stop.
There is a petition that calls upon the Treasury to request the Bank of England to consider depicting Alan Turing when new £10 banknotes are designed. However, given Turing’s contributions as a computer scientist, it should be much more appropriate for him to appear on a digital currency such as bitcoins.
We therefore call upon the Bank of England to consider depicting Alan Turing on bitcoins.

Bitcoins, for those who don’t know (so don’t understand the silliness), are described as:

an experimental new digital currency that enables instant payments to anyone, anywhere in the world. Bitcoin uses peer-to-peer technology to operate with no central authority: managing transactions and issuing money are carried out collectively by the network.

Math/Maths 90: Maths is to Mathematics as Math is to…?

A new episode of the Math/Maths Podcast has been released.

A conversation about mathematics between the UK and USA from Pulse-Project.org. This week Samuel and Peter spoke about: Endre Szemerédi wins the Abel Prize 2012; Automatically tagging the World Service archive; Intel Science Fair; 72nd Putnam; The Spanish link in cracking the Enigma code; Greater Manchester sunflowers to test Alan Turing theory; e-petition: Put Alan Turing on the next £10 note; Five Math Things to do Before You Die; Music helps children learn maths; Alcohol boosts ability to solve problems creatively; Spiked Math IQ Test; Mondrian of Life; Journalism lecturer to take maths GSCE to test ‘dumbing down’; The Proof is Trivial; Angry Birds Space Mirrors Real Rocket Science; Rosenthal Prize; The New MAA Store; new NCETM contract; Reviving the Carnival of Mathematics; Google interviews: would you get a job with the search giant?; and more.

Get this episode: Math/Maths 90: Maths is to Mathematics as Math is to…?

Turing bank note petition

An e-petition: “Put Alan Turing on the next £10 note” has been posted on the Government e-petition website. The text of the petition reads:

Alan Turing is a national hero. His contribution to computer science, and hence to the life of the nation and the world, is incalculable. The ripple-effect of his theories on modern life continues to grow, and may never stop.
The current Bank of England £10 notes are Series E, but Series F notes are already in circulation for some denominations. We therefore call upon the Treasury to request the Bank of England to consider depicting Alan Turing when Series F £10 banknotes are designed.

Source: e-petition: “Put Alan Turing on the next £10 note