I’m looking for suggestions for women to appear on the new £50 note

[WeeMadArthur]

Hi all, I’ve just seen that the Bank of England have opened nominations for the next scientist to appear on the new £50 note. They have to be British and dead, and I think it’s about time that a woman appeared on it but I’m not sure who to put forward as I worry that if I put someone less well known that it will be a wasted vote against all the better publicized male scientists. The link to the vote is app.keysurvey.co.uk/f/1348443/10fc/

I've voted for Mary Anning

Roslyn Franklin

Florence Nightingale - the first female fellow elected to the Royal Statistical Society.

Florence Nightingale - the first female fellow elected to the Royal Statistical Society.

It's a great shame the artwork on her £10 note didn't include a pie chart - it easily could have done.

Lovelace's contribution over-inflated??

Lovelace's contribution over-inflated??

To science? Versus all the other British scientists who will be voted for, male and female?

With my objective scientist's hat on ... tbh yes, and Franklin too. If they ever have a vote on honouring women whose achievements were undervalued and who were held back by their sex, then it'd be hard to pick between those two, Anning and no doubt others. But this one is simply for a scientist of either sex. Wouldn't it be great to see a woman (and mother, to boot) whose career was a complete success, a truly inspiring role model?

If I had to bet, it'll be Hawking or Turing this time though.

Hodgkin has to be the top choice, it's shocking how badly known she is considering her stellar career.

More historically would Caroline Hershal count as British? Mary Somerville is another good choice.

Dorothy Hodgkin vote done from me

The bear from the Revenant

Quick bio including how the press at the time responded to her Nobel prize win. Now, to put her win in context only two women had won it before: Marie and Irene Curie and only three have won it since.

She had been ignored by the Nobel commitee for years but two years before Max Perutz won and he then was able to put her name forward otherwise she might have been overlooked for even longer. This is despite her being the person who was the first to determine the structure of biomolecules: Vitamin B13, penicillin (during the war as part of her war work) and ultimately insulin, the first protein to have its structure determined. If she was a male British scientist she would be much better known.

Ignore my suggestion of Mary Somerville, she's already on the RBS £10.

Good!
Just been reading the wiki page on Somerville - she definitely deserves her place. I want to acquire one of those tenners next time I'm north of the border - in addition to Somerville, the reverse shows a pair of otters, making it the most delightful note ever IMO!

Are there any other women on Scottish banknotes, does anyone know?

Lovelace's contribution over-inflated??

I do love her and she made a great contribution, but if you read into it, it seems Babbage did you algorithms before/with her, but as she published them and he didn't she gets called "the first computer programmer" which may not quite be true.

Am surprised people think Franklin has been forgotten - I thought everyone knew about her!

And Anning was of course a scientist, although self taught she found her own methods, just as the early male scientists did.