Margaret Thatcher could beat Stephen Hawking and Alan Turing to become new ‘science-based’ face of £50 note because she was a chemist before launching political career
Margaret Thatcher could be the next face on the money in your wallet after the controversial former prime minister made the final shortlist to be on the new £50 note.
The Conservative leader is in the last 1,000 contenders after votes for the design of the note, which will be the last to be made with polymer instead of paper, were closed.
Mrs Thatcher’s competitors include cosmologist Stephen Hawking, father of theoretical computer science Alan Turing, Rosalind Franklin the woman whose work helped discover DNA and author and natural scientist Helen Beatrix Potter.
The new £50 must use the face of someone who has contributed to science in the UK - and thanks to the politician’s past in chemistry, she fits the bill.
Before becoming Prime Minister, Baroness Thatcher worked as a research chemist for food company J Lyons and Co - as part of a team of people that developed soft-scoop ice cream in the UK.
Margaret Thatcher (pictured) appears on the list, although her exact contribution to science is unknown
Margaret Thatcher at work whilst as a research chemist, 1950. She is credited as being part of the team which helped to create soft scoop ice-cream
Who are the faces of current British notes?
£5: The polymer £5 note featuring Sir Winston Churchill entered circulation on 13 September 2016
£10: The new polymer £10 note, featuring Jane Austen, entered circulation on 14 September 2017
£20: The current £20 note features the economist Adam Smith. It will be replaced by one featuring landscape painter JMW Turner in 2020
There were a total of 230,000 nominations to replace the current £50 which features industrial revolution pioneers Matthew Boulton and James Watt.
Professor Brian Cox was quick to nominate Prof Hawking, the renowned theoretical physicist who died in March, for inspiring 'thousands of scientists' and 'millions' of others.
Royal Society president Venki Ramakrishnan said he would choose 'remarkable individual' Prof Hodgkin, the chemist who died in 1994.
The names will be reviewed next by the Banknote Character Advisory Committee which will reveal the winner in the summer.
In 2020 the £20 will be replaced with a design featuring artist JMW Turner.
The 330 million £50 notes in circulation will be replaced at a later date.
More than 200 people, including Lord Victor Adebowale and Baroness Sayeeda Warsi, signed a letter sent to the deciding panel – encouraging them to pick a person of ethnic minority.
So far, there are no BAME people featured on British bank notes.
"We do not lack candidates, and arguably their achievements were the greater for having been made at a time when many careers and were effectively closed to them, whether through colonial rules, racism, or the legacy of slavery," the letter states.
Among those put forward were Crimean War nurse Mary Seacole and wartime secret agent Noor Inayat Khan, the first female radio operator sent into Nazi-occupied France.
To be eligible, the individual must be real, deceased and have contributed to any field of science in the UK.
