The headmaster and CEO of Sherborne School Dr Dominic Luckett says he is ‘delighted’ one of the school’s most eminent alumni Alan Mathison Turing OBE is featured on the new £50 note in celebration of his pioneering work.

Turing, the codebreaker and computer pioneer, was educated at Sherborne School and is best known for helping accelerate efforts to read German Nazi messages with the Enigma machine. His groundbreaking work is believed to have been pivotal in shortening the Second World War.

The banknote will be the last to change from paper to polymer and will enter circulation on June 23 in honour of Turing, who was born on that day in 1912.

Dr Dominic Luckett said: “We are delighted that Alan Turing, one of our most eminent alumni, is featured on the new £50 note in celebration of his pioneering work and his extraordinary impact upon science, technology and society. His crucial work as a code- breaker at Bletchley Park and his enormous contribution to the subsequent development of computing have become more widely recognised in recent years and we as a school are keen to do all we can to preserve and promote his legacy.”

“Many of our boys draw inspiration from his genius and, as one example of that, a team of computer science enthusiasts are spearheading a project to produce an app providing a virtual reality experience of Alan Turing’s life, his possessions and his time at Sherborne School. “The boys have conjured remarkable solutions to the problems they have encountered in moving the project forward at this challenging time, emulating the resilience and resourcefulness that Turing himself so clearly exemplified.”

Alan Turing was born in Maida Vale in London and boarded at Westcott House at Sherborne School. Alan gained a mathematics degree at King’s
College, Cambridge
and a PhD at Princeton University in New Jersey.

In 1936 he published a paper which today is recognised as the foundation of computer science and began working at Bletchley Park, Buckinghamshire in 1939, where he helped develop the Bombe machine. The machine is capable of breaking secret German military messages which were sent using the Enigma machine.

In 1952 he was arrested because he was homosexual and in 1954, aged 41, Alan died from suicide by cyanide poisoning in Wilmslow, Cheshire.

This was disputed by his mother, Sara who argued he accidentally ingested cyanide during a chemistry experiment. Alan was posthumously pardoned in 2013 and four years later, in 2017, the government agreed to officially pardon all men who had criminal records for being homosexual.

The Alan Turing page can be found on Sherborne School website: oldshirburnian.org.uk/alan-turing/.

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