UKC

You can vote here for your favourite scientist ( I thought they we going for a woman this time, but it's not mentioned on the form).

https://app.keysurvey.co.uk/f/1348443/10fc/

Sadly, it doesn't seem to be offering a prize, I would have thought a couple of the new notes might be apt.

It was a toss between Dorothy Crowfoot Hodgkin and Jocelyn Bell Burnell for me. Dotty, won in the end.

Who would you vote for?

Actually you can vote more than once so I've voted for both

James Clerk Maxwell (by far the most significant British scientist not to have been previously on a note).

Possibly Paul Dirac or Alan Turing or William Herschel as reserves. 

No Ladies on your list?

No men on mine though, so fair dooes

I voted for Herschel and his sister Caroline together as she perhaps deserves to be better known as a pioneer and not just as an assistant. 

The problem is that there are no British women scientists who are in the same league as Darwin and Newton (previously on a note) or Maxwell.    Those three revolutionised whole areas of science. 

For example, all our modern understanding of electro-magnetism is based on Maxwell's work.  And just about all of the  economy nowadays is based on devices that use  electromagnetism. 

Of course one could pick a woman because she's a woman ...

What about Sophie Wilson as she was a significant contributor to computer literacy and then the ARM processor, also solves the gender conflict.

Ada Lovelace too in the computer world.

Although her significance is routinely exaggerated.  E.g.:

https://thonyc.wordpress.com/2013/10/08/mary-somerville-was-not-the-first-s...

Well you could but, two out of you three examples have already been on our money. I don't think you need to pick a woman because she's a woman, you could pick a woman because of her achievements.

But if one were to rank all past British scientists by importance and impact,  the women so far suggested fwould be well down the list (hmm, maybe Mary Anning would be relatively high up). 

"Sadly, it doesn't seem to be offering a prize, I would have thought a couple of the new notes might be apt."

Well the winner is dead. Or do you think that everyone that votes for the winner should get a couple of notes? 

James Hutton?  Why is this being narrowed to scientists?

NT's Cragside House has had a  women in engineering exhibition and it was decided to cover up busts and portraits of men around the house the better to focus visitors' minds on female achievement.

Fortunately Sir William Armstrong himself was saved from the ignominy of having a tea towel chucked over his likeness, probably because it was his house, after all.

Decision of the BofE, given that currently we have:

£5 Churchill
£10 Jane Austen
£20 Adam Smith
£50 ???

... so maybe a scientist is appropriate within the set. 

I voted for Paul Dirac

Sir Frank Whittle, his invention changed the world.

Very tempted to vote for Dirac (his biography "the strangest man" is a good read) will probably plump for Faraday.

Maybe just one out of all the people who vote for the winner.

Better than that just me

Hate to be picky, but I don't think anyone said we had to rank them, then vote for who you thought was best, you could vote simply because you like their hair style, in which case Faraday would win.

Beatrice (Tilly) Shilling who invented a device during the Battle of Britain which corrected the tendency of the carburettor aspirated Merlin engines in Spitfires and Hurricanes from cutting out when subjected to negative G during a dog fight, which put them at a disadvantage against the fuel injected Mercedes engined Me 109s.

Her simple invention known affectionately as "Tilly's Orifice" by the Battle of Britain pilots was one of the instrumental factors which helped win the Battle.

On reflection she was an engineer rather than a scientist, so probably wouldn't qualify.

Vote for both, like in the General election.

This (from the Bank of England web page https://www.bankofengland.co.uk/banknotes/50-pound-note-nominations) should help:

"You can nominate as many people as you like. But anyone who appears on the new £50 note must:

- have contributed to the field of science

- be real – so no fictional characters please

- not be alive - Her Majesty the Queen is the only exception

- have shaped thought, innovation, leadership or values in the UK

- inspire people, not divide them 

You can suggest anyone who has contributed to the fields of pure or applied science. That could include: astronomy, biology, bio-technology, chemistry, engineering, mathematics, medical research, physics, technology and zoology."

Maxwell, Newton and Einstein were potentially the worlds top 3 greatest scientists, so Maxwell gets my vote. Back in the day when I used to teach undergrads, I used to teach electromagnetics and Maxwell’s equations to first years. Nowadays the calculus of grad, div and curl are considered too hard for first years ;-(

Maxwell without Faraday?  Or indeed Faraday without Maxwell? 

Maxwell without Faraday?  Or indeed Faraday without Maxwell? 

Not where I teach they're not

So that would preclude Darwin, or Galileo, or anybody with revolutionary ideas, favouring the mediocre.

Faraday has already featured on a note so is presumably not in the running.   That's why, if the competition is on merit, Maxwell is the only contender! 

George Green - the Jonathan Creek of mathematicians.

What about Brian May?  The modern scientist who most looks like Isaac Newton

This caused a lot of anger from visitors who'd paid full whack to see the house as it is only to find out it had been purged of its male "bias" by the political correctness nazis of the National Trust and hence had been unable to see much of what makes the house worth seeing.

https://www.standard.co.uk/news/uk/national-trust-faces-backlash-for-coveri...

He does have very nice hair.

Edit - I think someone would have to kill him though, as it has to be a dead person. I'm not volunteering.

Perhaps it’s about redressing the balance, positive discrimination if you like.

if that doesn’t make your head explode.

The reality is though, there is no balance. Historically, those who were successful in scientific endeavour were almost universally men and no amount of revisionism will change that. Is it not better to look to the future rather than misrepresent the past? There will be plenty of dead female scientists of note in a few decades' time.

Maybe, the few women that did breakthrough should be celebrated even more not simply because they knew lots of clever stuff, but because they had to battle society too.

Not strictly a science. Florence Nightingale was more statician than nurse. It was her gathering of data and evidence, facilities & equipmeht, mortality rates, causes of death... that proved soldiers deaths in hospital were preventable, and then pushing her case, rather fluffing pillows which she should be remembered for.

Would be a good choice, but disqualified for having previously been on the £10 bank note!

Coel you're knowledge of bank notes is impressive! I know the queen's on em but after that I'm all at sea (galloping senility) 

Of course we could declare the whole discussion pointless -- has anyone (other than drug dealers) actually seen a £50 note in recent history?

What about Rosalind Franklin who should have won the Nobel Prize for DNA along with Watson and Crick but who died before the award was given and was thus robbed of tghe name recognition she deserved.

True. They could put on it whoever first refined cocaine 

£50 note would be an upgrade! 

I too voted for James Clerk Maxwell because, as you say, his contibution to theoretical physics is up there with Newton and Einstein. The unification of electricity and magnetism with his equations was, without doubt, the greatest breakthrough in physics of the 19th century and was a precursor to both relativity and quantum mechanics in the early 20th century.

Unlike Einstein and Newton though, James Clerk Maxwell is relatively unknown - I was discussing this with three friends the other day and none of them had heard of him. Putting him on the £50 note would be a very good way to raise his public profile.

Not for me it wouldn't as someone above stated, I can't remember the last time I saw a £50 note.

At least he's got a number of formulae named after him.

Yes, she obtained some of the crucial data that Crick and Watson used -- or, more strictly, the crucial "Photo 51" was obtained by Raymond Gosling, who was a PhD student working under the supervision of Rosalind Franklin and Maurice Wilkins.

Watson, Crick and Wilkins got the Nobel Prize a decade later; Rosalind Franklin had, sadly, died of cancer several years earlier (and the prizes are not given posthumously).

Raymond Gosling wasn't part of the prize (graduate students working under supervision are commonly not included;  the oft-told story of Jocelyn Bell Burnell, pulsars, and the Nobel Prize is more about "because she was a graduate student"  than "because she is female".  Almost no-one says "isn't it unfair that Raymond Gosling ...", nor "Isn't it unfair that J.D.H Pilkington didn't ..."). 

My vote goes to Alan Turing.  We all benefit from his work every day, and the treatment he received from the authorities was a disgrace so I think this would be a fitting end to the story of his life.

I don't know if you are just trying to make a point but it seems to me that there was a hell of a lot more contribution made than supplying a photo by a colleague. Indeed her colleague Maurice Wilkins got the prize when he himself thought he'd not done anywhere near as much.

I totally agree with all of the above. I have always been baffled why one of the three greatest physicists of all time and one of the three greatest British scientists of all time is so little recognised in his own country. The obvious choice by a mile for the £50 note.

True, she was directing the work that that student did. 

I voted for James Clerk Maxwell.

Dave

Well, indeed, I haven't seen one either and, to be honest, I'm not actually sure what the point of them is anymore, what with cards and on-line payments etc. But this poll and the publicity around the new note will raise the profile of whoever is awarded honour of being on the back.

I'm a physicist by background so am probably a bit biased, but I can't think of any one else who has had the impact of Maxwell who hasn't already been on a note.

Knew someone on the team did you?

I only wonder because the consensus from the science community seems to differ from your assessment.

In what way?

Dr Susan Calvin for her work on robotics.

She'll have to wait another 39 years until she dies.

What about Sir Bernard Lovell?  In, accidentally, almost at the Birth of a new science and nearly put in the dock for it?  Or Watson Watt, or Alexander Fleming whose work has affected almost every one of us? Some of us might not exist but for antibiotics.

All good choices

Stephen Hawking - even non scientists can recognise him and be inspired.

He was my first thought when I heard about them putting a science person on the note, but I decided others were more worthy. I still like Stevie though.

I think Hawking will win since they are having a vote, for the same reason Snowdon wins 'best mountain' competitions.   He's the scientist people will have heard of because he's been on the news and the Big Bang Theory.    

James Clerk Maxwell should win but nobody has heard of him except scientists so he doesn't have a chance.   Einstein said his work was the "most profound and the most fruitful that physics has experienced since the time of Newton" which is a pretty strong nomination.

Ah. A public vote. Boffin McScienceface, anyone?

Maxwell ‘should’ win? I see your point about his work having made the most valuable contribution to science,  but I am not sure that that is the qualification. Not as obvious a role model as others, so less likely to make a valuable contribution to science in future by inspiring future scientists and raising the profile of science in society. But I may be biased by bad memories of div and grad and whatnots at school.

That was Maxwell's big mistake, if he'd had a decent marketing team they'd have told him to make sure his equation didn't involve advanced calculus.  Something simple like E = mc^2 or F = ma and every schoolkid would know about him. 

Yes, although Maxwell’s demon is quite a catchy concept. He should have concentrated on finding more hypothetical supernatural helpers. I would rescind my objection to Maxwell if his portrait on the note had a little daemon on his shoulder.

Even better if it was done by 'Jim'll Paint It'...

Ada Lovelace

Alan Turing

Stephen Hawkins

George Green

Rosalind Franklin

Box A =mu0 J trips off the tongue quite well...

What!? Maxwell's equations are things of extraordinary mathematical simplicity and beauty when written with Div/Grad/Curl notation and I seem to remember from the last days of my theoretical physics (before I got lost and gave up!) that their relativistic version where they condense into one single equation as the distinction between the electric and magnetic fields disappears is truly astonishing (Einstein must have been beside himself when he saw this!)

I believe that the Div/Grad/Curl notation had not been invented when Maxwell wrote his equations down and without it they look pretty horrendous - which to me only makes his acheievement all the more remarkable.

Yeah, but what did he ever do on grit?

They are lovely equations when written with div grad and curl, but sadly for the full appreciation require knowledge of what div grad and curl actually mean. 

My school maths teacher always used to struggle when saying “div”, perhaps because he was worried that the class joker would pick up its second meaning as an insult and go hurr hurr hurr.

Ada Lovelace wrote the first computer program. Could be argued that’s the most significant scientific endeavour in our history. 

Actually I think that is a bit misleading, but she has certainly been mentioned in despatches since the time I fell upon computing in 1979, as has Turing, very much celebrated at that time, written about constantly, neither forgotten at all as asserted by that narrative of the new storytellers.

What about Tommy Flowers of Dollis Hill, the man who made Colossus possible and whose vision persuaded others that it could be done?  Contrary to the other narrative current till the 80s that the history of computing was totally American.

the Defence Industry developed language ADA of course was a very prominent tribute to Ada Lovelace, so that she certainly has not been overlooked whereas Tommy Flowers was written out of history for a long time.

Tommy is a good shout, it's a pity they destroyed all the plans after the war, it would have been great to study them today.

Sort of, it's fairer to say that she was first to *publish* a computer program.  The Analytical Engine was conceived by Babbage, and he started building it (though it was never finished).  His notes contain the actual "first programs", since in order to conceive of the Analytical Engine he had to conceive of how it could be used,

But Babbage was very tardy in publishing anything on the Analytical Engine.  It was Lovelace who published the first (English) account of it, and that account included examples, that she had constructed, of how it would be programmed. 

going back earlier, as Babbage's Engines borrowed ideas from earlier technology, I can only imagine the feeling of amazement and unreality the first time cards were read into a Jacquard Loom and a complicated pattern emerged "3d printed" from the far end

my vote still goes for the Herschels (of whom Caroline has a lot of mentions in the Aubrey Maturin novels of Patrick O'Brian, since she assists Captain Aubrey with his telescope making and astronomical observations   )