Misleading Claim About Jagadish Chandra Bose Being Featured on £50 Note Viral

Bose was nominated to be on the British currency notes in 2019 but he did not get selected for it.

Fact-check: A false claim about Jagadish Chandra Bose's image being featured on £50 note in the UK is going viral on the internet.

(Photo: The Quint)

A claim is going viral on social media stating that Indian scientist Jagadish Chandra Bose's image is going to be featured on £50 banknote in the United Kingdom.

An archive of this post can be seen here.

Translation can be seen here.

(Archives of more claims on social media can be seen here and here.)

What's the truth?: This claim is misleading. Bose's name was only nominated to be on the British notes, however, his name wasn't selected in the final round.

• Finally in 2021, renowned scientist Alan Turning was featured on the £50 notes.

How did we find out the truth?: We performed a relevant keyword search using 'Jagadish Chandra Bose £50 Bank of England' on Google and this led us to the official website of the Bank of England.

• The bank had shared a list of 174,112 nominations of the names received through public's entries.

Screenshot from the document.

(Source: Bank of England/Screenshot)

• The document also mentioned that this is only the "preliminary stage of identifying eligible names for consideration" to feature a person on £50 note.

• It also adds, "These names have not yet been considered by our Banknote Character Advisory Committee."

Screenshot from the document.

(Source: Bank of England/Screenshot)

• Next, we performed a keyword search on Google using 'new note £50 bank of England'.

• This led us to an official announcement shared by the Bank of England about the new design of the £50 banknote featuring scientist Alan Turing.

• This was shared on 15 July 2019 and it stated that the Science and Industry Museum in Manchester revealed the imagery depicting Turing in the new polymer £50 note.

• It also mentioned that this is expected to enter circulation by the end of 2021.

Screenshot from the announcement.

Screenshot from the announcement.

• Following this, another announcement was shared on 25 March 2021 declaring the official circulation of £50 notes featuring Turing.

• We also checked the website to see all the other banknotes in circulation and it did not carry Bose's name.

Screenshot from the website.

(Source: Bank of England/Screenshot)

To cross-check, we also checked and found Turing's name in the list of nominations where Bose's name was mentioned.

Conclusion: A false claim about Jagadish Chandra Bose's image being featured on £50 note in the UK is going viral on the internet.

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