The Bank of England received more than 114,000 nominations which met their criteria of who should be the new face of the ￡50 note. It had to be a real individual – so not Wonder Woman or Winnie-the-Pooh. They had to be dead and they must have contributed to the field of science in the UK.

So far the list includes the discoverer of penicillin Alexander Fleming, the father of modern epidemiology John Snow, the telephone inventor Alexander Graham Bell, the astronomer Patrick Moore and the computing pioneers Ada Lovelace and Alan Turing. Alan Turing, who broke the Nazi Enigma code during World War Two, has more recently gained popular recognition thanks to the 2014 film The Imitation Game starring Benedict Cumberbatch, as Turing.

Bookmakers have Stephen Hawking as the current favourite, with odds of 7/4. The scientist broke new ground on the basic laws which govern the universe. He died earlier this year, having suffered from motor neurone disease for most of his adult life, which gradually paralysed the scientist and eventually left him only able to speak through a computer.

The Nobel Prize winner Dorothy Hodgkin is also one of the favourites to win. She is best known for her work in developing crystallography of biochemical compounds. Nominations close in two weeks. After that, a final shortlist will be made and the next year, the new face of ￡50 note will finally be announced.