Does Ada Lovelace belong on the £50 note?

The call from the Bank of England for members of the public to nominate a scientist to put on the new £50 note offers an opportunity to rebalance the gender disparity so far. We’ve had Michael Faraday, Isaac Newton, Charles Darwin, Christopher Wren, Lord Kelvin (in Scotland), George Stephenson, and Matthew Boulton and James Watt (together on the current note). Florence Nightingale – a pioneer of epidemiological statistics as well as nursing – is the lone female representative. So far, a popular choice has been Ada Lovelace, who worked with Charles Babbage on the steampunk computer the Difference Engine.