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Nobel Laureate Finds Scientific Mistake On Turkish Banknote

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Tom Hale

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Tom Hale

Senior Journalist

Tom is a writer in London with a Master's degree in Journalism whose editorial work covers anything from health and the environment to technology and archaeology.

Senior Journalist

593 Nobel Laureate Finds Scientific Mistake On Turkish Banknote
Can you spot the mistake? ccarlstead/Flickr (CC BY-NC-ND 2.0)

Professor Aziz Sancar has a very geeky problem with Turkey’s five lira banknote.

Last year, the Turkish-American biochemist earned a Nobel Prize in Chemistry for his work that mapped the process of DNA repair. Since the note features a DNA double helix, it’s fair to say he’s probably right.

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Professor Sancar was recently giving a series of talks at schools near Istanbul, where he pointed out the DNA on the Turkish five lira note "shows a left-handed Z-DNA helix winding from left to right, when it should be the other way round." Psh, schoolboy error!

Along with that unforgivable mistake, the note also features atomic symbols, planets, and a Turkish historian of science, Adnan Sayili.

The five lira note has been in circulation since 2009. Professor Sancar said he originally pointed out the error to The Central Bank Of The Republic Of Turkey in 2011. He’s still waiting for a reply.

[H/T: BBC]

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Main image credit: ccarlstead/Flickr (CC BY-NC-ND 2.0)


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