Mary Somerville has been short-listed to appear on the Royal Bank of Scotland (RBS) ten-pound note. If successful, she would be the only woman honoured on a Scottish banknote other than the Queen.
Somerville, a nineteenth-century Scottish scientist after whom the Oxford college is named, will be up against the physicist James Clerk Maxwell, whose study of electromagnetism inspired Albert Einstein and Thomas Telford, the civil engineer known as the ‘Colossus of Roads’.
Somerville is credited with a crucial role in the discovery of Neptune, thanks to her writing on a hypothetical planet interrupting the orbit of Uranus.
RBS is inviting votes via its Facebook page until 7th February, after asking the public for nominees in the field of science and innovation.
This was advertised on Cuntry Living, encouraging members to vote for Somerville, who “made a name for herself at a time when women tended to be de facto excluded from most scientific institutions.”
RBS’s decision to shortlist Somerville follows controversy from the Bank of England’s decision to place the prison reformer Elizabeth Fry alongside Winston Churchill on the £5 note from 2016.
RBS’s chief marketing officer, David Wheldon, told the BBC, “The strength of our shortlist is indicative of the significant contribution that Scotland has made to the field of science and innovation.”
“I look forward to finding out which one of these great figures is chosen.”
