BS: GBP 50 Note: Scientists nominated

Subject: RE: BS: GBP 50 Note: Scientists nominated
From: Nigel Parsons
Date: 01 Dec 18 - 02:26 PM

And, as this is about the £50 note.

50!

Subject: RE: BS: GBP 50 Note: Scientists nominated
From: DMcG
Date: 01 Dec 18 - 02:30 PM

My preference would be for a slightly more obscure scientist, as I see some merit is people saying "Who is that?" and finding out themselves or via their mates. But I suspect in the end it will be a fairly well known figure like Babbage, or Ada Lovelace, Darwin or Steven Hawking that many/most already know about.

Subject: RE: BS: GBP 50 Note: Scientists nominated
From: Jos
Date: 01 Dec 18 - 02:37 PM

"people saying "Who is that?" and finding out themselves or via their mates"

This might happen when the choice of design is first announced, though the announcement will probably include something about the chosen person, but I think it is unlikely that it will happen very often after that when someone actually sees a £50 note.

Subject: RE: BS: GBP 50 Note: Scientists nominated
From: Jos
Date: 01 Dec 18 - 03:06 PM

The trouble with claiming a '50' post is that often it isn't number 50 when it appears - either another post just sneaks in while you are posting, as here, making it 51, or sometimes a post is deleted, making it number 49.

And a suggestion for a scientist - how about the botanist Joseph Banks.

Subject: RE: BS: GBP 50 Note: Scientists nominated
From: robomatic
Date: 01 Dec 18 - 04:36 PM

Darwin? Faraday? Maxwell?

Maybe they've already been honoured??

Subject: RE: BS: GBP 50 Note: Scientists nominated
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 01 Dec 18 - 04:41 PM

Banks was a bit of a pioneer. But there have been loads of great botanists. I love Roy Lancaster, a great botanist and conservationist and communicator, but he ain't dead! I met him a few years ago at Heligan in Cornwall and his enthusiasm and powers of inspiration were undimmed. He and I had a mutual friend, Vicar Shaw of Waterhead, Oldham, which was the vicar's parish. Vicar Shaw's speciality was finding exotic plants on the squalid rubbish tips of Lancashire, the sort of plants that had sprung up from seeds imported on wool shoddy and other industrial waste. One of his very favourite spots was the Crown Wallpaper tip in Darwen, not far from the famous India Mill campanile. He and I once spent a joyous day on Nob End Tip, where the Irwell meets the Croal, a Victorian dump for alkaline waste, which has an amazing assemblage of alien plants that you'd think have no place in Lancashire. But he did appreciate beauty too, and he and I, accompanied by the great Darwen botanist Peter Fentem, climbed Penyghent one April day to see the purple saxifrage in full flower. I'd seen the saxifrage in several places in the Scottish highlands, but this was a first for the Rev at his then age of 77, a chap who had no interest whatsoever in botanising beyond his beloved north of England. So I'm nominating Vicar Charles Edward, as he called himself, though I'm certainly going to be in a minority of one!

Steve, the lad nominated by the man himself as Vicar Shaw's "Radcliffe eye." And he was no relation, in case you think I'm biased!

Subject: RE: BS: GBP 50 Note: Scientists nominated
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 01 Dec 18 - 05:11 PM

Speaking of botanists, a really good candidate would be Marianne North. She travelled the world, especially in the warmer climes, in Victorian times, painting exotic plants in their natural contexts. She was a good friend of Joseph Hooker and she knew Charles Darwin, who encouraged her exploits in Australasia especially. The paintings are lovely and they reveal considerable botanical understanding. There's a lovely book of her travels, containing lots of pages of her paintings, called A Vision Of Eden. I possess a little book of botany by Sir John Lubbock, published in 1875, that Marianne owned. Her name is written on the title page, in her own hand! In Kew Gardens there's a beautiful little gallery containing most of her paintings. They're all displayed cheek by jowel, but that in no way ruins the effect.

Subject: RE: BS: GBP 50 Note: Scientists nominated
From: MudGuard
Date: 01 Dec 18 - 05:13 PM

no foreigners on British bank notes?

Queen Elizabeth is from Sachsen-Coburg-Gotha and Hannover descent ...

She is essentially German ;-)

Her kids are even more German, with Mr. Battenberg (anglicized as Mountbatton) as father

;-)

Greetings from Germany,
Andy a/k/a MudGuard

Subject: RE: BS: GBP 50 Note: Scientists nominated
From: Backwoodsman
Date: 01 Dec 18 - 05:30 PM

"With regard to Backwoodsman and Steve buying a pint in a pub while still at school, wasn't that illegal 'back then'?"

It was, Sen. But I was a big lad for my size! :-)

"Her kids are even more German, with Mr. Battenberg (anglicised as Mountbatton) as father."

Corerection (two, actually)....

1) He was born on the Greek island of Corfu so, strictly speaking, he's a Greek.
2) It's 'Mountbatten.

Subject: RE: BS: GBP 50 Note: Scientists nominated
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 01 Dec 18 - 05:35 PM

I'm sure we're both still "big lads," John, even at our age. Nod nod, wink wink, say no more...

Subject: RE: BS: GBP 50 Note: Scientists nominated
From: Backwoodsman
Date: 01 Dec 18 - 05:37 PM

Stephen! Behave! ;-) ;-)

Subject: RE: BS: GBP 50 Note: Scientists nominated
From: Jack Campin
Date: 01 Dec 18 - 05:47 PM

Is Rosalind Franklin on the shortlist?

Subject: RE: BS: GBP 50 Note: Scientists nominated
From: DMcG
Date: 01 Dec 18 - 05:54 PM

Yes, she is, and here is the full list so far

Subject: RE: BS: GBP 50 Note: Scientists nominated
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 01 Dec 18 - 07:54 PM

"Stephen! Behave!'

Flippin' 'eck! How uncanny is that! I'm "Steve" to everybody, all the time. The only exception to that is when I'm in trouble, either with my missus or with my mum, in which case they call me "Stephen...!" I always know that I'm in deepest doodah when I hear that name. John, are you colluding!?

Subject: RE: BS: GBP 50 Note: Scientists nominated
From: Jos
Date: 02 Dec 18 - 04:42 AM

Mudguard said "no foreigners on British bank notes?"

No, Mudguard, foreigners are allowed, on condition that they:

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

In any case, she is on the front. This is about who will be on the back.

Subject: RE: BS: GBP 50 Note: Scientists nominated
From: MudGuard
Date: 02 Dec 18 - 12:37 PM

I was answering to McGrath of Harlow:
Cite: "Can't go having foreigners on British Money."

Subject: RE: BS: GBP 50 Note: Scientists nominated
From: SPB-Cooperator
Date: 04 Dec 18 - 11:13 AM

Didn't Newton have this habit of publishing other people's ideas?

Subject: RE: BS: GBP 50 Note: Scientists nominated
From: Nigel Parsons
Date: 04 Dec 18 - 11:46 AM

I thought he built upon the ideas of others.
Hence the quote "If I have seen further it is by standing on the shoulders of giants". The last six words of this quote are given on the edge of many £2 coins, reminding us that all science builds on (or discards) what has been done before.
It is also a fitting reminder that Newton himself was Master of the Royal Mint.

Subject: RE: BS: GBP 50 Note: Scientists nominated
From: David Carter (UK)
Date: 05 Dec 18 - 04:36 AM

Robert Hooke accused Newton of taking credit for gravity from him, but it was Newton who supplied the mathematical proof for the theory of gravity. Hooke to be fair was also a great scientist with a number of important ideas and discoveries, including the idea that light was a wave, and Hooke's law which describes the behaviour of springs. Hooke should be in this list. Hooke and Newton seem to have detested each other, sad in two such great scientists. But in the end Newton's achievements were greater, because he could supply the mathematical rigour as well as the experimental skill.

In the end I think its difficult to look past Newton and Darwin for this, and maybe Roger Bacon if anyone thinks they really know what he looked like. Newton as has been mentioned has already been on a note, but that note is now discontinued, so it shouldn't rule him out. These are three of the four outstanding British figures in any field of the past thousand years, the fourth of course being Shakespeare.

Subject: RE: BS: GBP 50 Note: Scientists nominated
From: Mr Red
Date: 05 Dec 18 - 09:16 AM


I wonder why they couldn't put all these famous scientists on £50 notes, limited editions for each one. Perhaps it would make forgery too easy.

so what about all those Euro notes, from each country? And all those special edition coins?

I guess there are ways of watermarking that suffice in Europe.

Subject: RE: BS: GBP 50 Note: Scientists nominated
From: MudGuard
Date: 05 Dec 18 - 11:40 AM

The Euro bank notes are the same in all countries, but the design was changed in the last few years (to add more security/anti-forgery measures).

Only the coins are different in each country (on one side, the other side is common).
In some countries, the design was changed (e.g. Spain after Juan Carlos retired and Felipe became king), or in the Vatican (after the change of Pope from John Paul II to Benedikt XVI and then to Franciscus).

And every participating country can issue special 2 Euro coins.

Subject: RE: BS: GBP 50 Note: Scientists nominated
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 05 Dec 18 - 01:37 PM

I was being ironic, Mudguard. (Though having ancestors, even parents, from other countries shouldn't stop anyone being accepted as British, whether that's the Queen or the child of an immigrant from anywhere. Though there are various sneaky dodges, largely introduced by Theresa May that can mess that up for some people.)

Actually I'd prefer it if they stuck animals on the money instead of obscurely eminent people. With a Royal Corgi on the front.

Subject: RE: BS: GBP 50 Note: Scientists nominated
From: Senoufou
Date: 05 Dec 18 - 01:45 PM

A cat! A cat! (Gets too excited and has to sit down)

Subject: RE: BS: GBP 50 Note: Scientists nominated
From: DMcG
Date: 05 Dec 18 - 01:52 PM

Schrödinger's cat!

Subject: RE: BS: GBP 50 Note: Scientists nominated
From: Senoufou
Date: 05 Dec 18 - 02:02 PM

No! No! No! Poor cat, shut in a box waiting for an atom to set off a hammer and break a phial of acid which kills it. Knickers to Herr Schrodinger!
(I know it's only a 'thought experiment', but still...)

Subject: RE: BS: GBP 50 Note: Scientists nominated
From: DMcG
Date: 05 Dec 18 - 02:11 PM

The cat fails on two grounds. Firstly it is not real.

But then there is the question of whether it is dead...

Subject: RE: BS: GBP 50 Note: Scientists nominated
From: MudGuard
Date: 05 Dec 18 - 04:51 PM

"I was being ironic, Mudguard."

So was I ;-)

Subject: RE: BS: GBP 50 Note: Scientists nominated
From: Donuel
Date: 05 Dec 18 - 05:38 PM

https://www.msn.com/en-ie/news/world/stephen-hawking-had-a-grim-warning-about-donald-trump-before-he-died/ar-BBKccUR

Clearly one of them is a traitor and should never appear on money