Darwin, Turing

https://barryhisblog.blogspot.com/p/darwin-turing.html

A couple of British banknotes, just to piss certain people off.

The top one is, of course, Charles Robert Darwin, who, together with Alfred Russel Wallace, produced the first theoretical framework that made the living world make sense.

Darwin, until recently, was depicted on the back of the British ten-pound note. He was replaced by an image of the author, Jane Austen, not because he fell into disrepute, but because it's normal practise to change the notes from time to time to show different notables.

Below is a fifty pound note, featuring Alan Mathison Turing. Turing was a prominent pure mathematician who was recruited to work at  Bletchley Park, as part of a team dedicated to cracking the codes the German military used during WWII, famously cracking the Enigma coding machine. But unlike the film story, The Imitation Game, he was particularly instrumental in cracking the more advanced Lorenz code, and in the process, he developed, with others, the first recognisable electronic computer. The machine you are using now derives from his work. It is possible that without the work at Bletchley Park, we would not have our computing devices. We may not even be alive if the Nazis had not been hacked and had thereby been thwarted in trying to exterminate our ancestors. 

Turing was an atheist and a homosexual. After the war, he was rewarded by being persecuted and preyed upon. Chemically castrated. Homosexuality was then a criminal matter, and he suicided, or was possibly murdered, when he ate a poisoned apple. He is now honoured by his depiction on the banknote, and by having streets named after him.

Bletchley Park is a fascinating establishment, well worth visiting.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Darwin
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alan_Turing