Mystery of woman on Scottish £20 note solved

Thanks to journalists pursuing a story the Royal Society of Chemistry has discovered the identity of a woman chemical scientist whose image is featured on the Scottish £20 banknote.

The RSC put out a call to the Scottish media on October 7 when it wished to find the identity of the woman depicted on the note working in a laboratory.

The Scotsman newspaper ran the story which led to Janet Mullen of Peebles in the Borders being contacted by two other national newspapers, the Herald and the Mail as well as local media, all eager to find who she was and what she was doing now, 10 years after the note was issued to mark the 300th anniversary of the Bank of Scotland.

Mrs Mullen, mother-of-three, contacted the RSC London office to volunteer her career story and was amused by the experience of being photographed by the Daily Mail at home two days after the article appeared in The Scotsman.

"I work at Scottish Water now," said Mrs Mullen." At the time of the photograph being taken for the banknote I was at researching textile lubricants at the Scottish College of Textiles."

The news stories about the hunt for the mystery woman of the banknote led to coverage of the Royal Society of Chemistry annual "Science and the Parliament" communications day which will be staged in November at Holyrood in Edinburgh.