Gay Codebreaker Alan Turing to Be the New Face of £50 Banknote

Money? Good. Gay money? FABULOUS.

The Bank of England announced today that Alan Turing would become the new face of the £50 note, beating out a number of other famous Brits to replace Matthew Boulton and James Watt.

Turing was a codebreaker in World War II who is generally credited for helping bring an end to the war, despite his work being kept secret for many years following.

He was also an incredible mathematician and visionary, and his ideas came to form the basis of modern computing.

“As the father of computer science and artificial intelligence, as well as war hero, Alan Turing’s contributions were far ranging and path breaking,” Bank of England Governor Mark Carney said while announcing the new banknote.

But despite his tremendous contributions to society, Turing was ultimately convicted for being gay and chemically castrated in 1952. He committed suicide two years later.

Turing was given a post-humous pardon for his “crime” in 2013, a year after his papers on codebreaking were finally released to the public.

The new £50 note will feature Turing himself, his date of birth in binary code, the British Bombe machine used in cracking the Nazi’s Enigma code, and a quote from Turing: “This is only a foretaste of what is to come, and only the shadow of what is going to be.”

“I hope it will go some way to acknowledging his unprecedented contribution to society and science,” said former lawmaker John Leech, who worked to get Turing pardoned.

“But more importantly I hope it will serve as a stark and rightfully painful reminder of what we lost in Turing, and what we risk when we allow that kind of hateful ideology to win.”

The updated £50 note is expected to begin circulation in 2021.