50 Pence - Elizabeth II 5th Portrait, Stephen Hawking

Released as part of the Royal Mint's Innovation in Science series, this piece marks Hawking's contributions to theoretical physics — specifically his 1974 work on black hole radiation, which overturned the assumption that nothing could escape a black hole's gravity. The result, now called Hawking radiation, remains unobserved experimentally but is widely accepted on theoretical grounds.

Hawking died in March 2018, roughly a year before issue.