2003 Two Pounds

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Two different £2 coins were issued in 2003 – A commemorative coin to mark the discovery of DNA in 1953 and one with the standard ages of man reverse.

Commemorative £2 Coin, Type 11: (info on coin type numbers here)

Obverse Type (bust design by Ian Rank-Broadley):

2pounds1998-obv

Reverse Type (design by John Mills):

2pounds2003DNArev

Edge: DEOXYRIBONUCLEIC ACID.

Mintage for Circulation: 4,299,000.

Collectability/Scarcity: 1 (for scale details see here)

The story behind the design:

The obverse has the portrait of the Queen by Ian Rank-Broadley. The reverse is by John Mills and represents strands of DNA the encoding molecule of all known life forms, which had been discovered in 1953 by Francis Harry Compton Crick and James Dewey Watson.

http://science.howstuffworks.com/life/cellular-microscopic/dna1.htm

The Standard 2003 Coin:

Obverse Type (bust design by Ian Rank-Broadley):

2pounds1998-obv

Reverse Type (design by Bruce Rushin):

2poundsStandardrev

Edge: STANDING ON THE SHOULDERS OF GIANTS.

Mintage for Circulation: 17,531,250.

Collectability/Scarcity: 1 (for scale details see here).

The story behind the design:

The obverse portrait of the Queen by Ian Rank-Broadley has been used on all UK coinage from 1998 to 2015 and is the fourth portrait of the Queen used on coinage. At the time of writing, this portrait is due to be replaced by a new one, to be unveiled in 2015.

The reverse design shows the ages of man. Represented are the Iron Age, the Industrial Revolution, the Electronic Age and the Internet Age. The edge quote ‘STANDING ON THE SHOULDERS OF GIANTS’ is from a letter by Sir Isaac Newton from 1676 in which he wrote: ‘If I have seen further, it is by standing on the shoulders of giants’, which may have been a modest nod to other scientists, but some say that it may have been poking fun at the stature of the recipient of the letter, Robert Hooke. The expression ‘Standing on the shoulders of giants’ pre-dates Newton by many centuries:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Standing_on_the_shoulders_of_giants

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