![]() ![]() Newbold believed that each arcane letter was actually a collection of minuscule symbols readable under proper magnification, which would have meant the microscope was invented centuries before we thought. In 1921, William Newbold, a philosopher at the University of Pennsylvania who had an interest in cryptography, claimed that a 13th-century friar wrote it as a scientific treatise. It now resides at the Beinecke Library at Yale University.Īt first, it mainly attracted humanities scholars. The find failed to make Voynich rich, but the manuscript has continued to make headlines for more than 100 years, challenging researchers in many fields, including linguistics, botany, and machine learning. Resembling a modern book rather than a scroll, it is full of looping text handwritten in an elaborate script, accompanied by lavish illustrations. The manuscript was acquired in 1912 by Wilfrid Voynich, a Polish rare-book dealer. And for some, it’s simply the thrill of the hunt. For others, it’s a chance to test promising new digital technologies and artificial-intelligence advances. So why are so many scholars and scientists driven to solve the puzzle? For many, it’s the ultimate opportunity to prove their analytical skills in their given field. But its provenance and meaning are uncertain, making it virtually impossible to corroborate any claims about its contents against other historical materials. ![]() Read: Has a mysterious medieval code really been solved?Īll we know for certain, through forensic testing, is that the manuscript likely dates to the 15th century, when books were still mostly handmade and rare. “The academic world is a jungle,” wrote Schinner, who first applied statistical analytics to the manuscript more than a decade ago, “and like in any jungle, it is not recommended to show even potential weakness.” In Cheshire’s case, the University of Bristol retracted a press release highlighting his paper after other experts roundly challenged his research.Īndreas Schinner, a physicist, recounted in an email a rumor that the Voynich manuscript can be “pure poison” for a scholarly career, because when studying the manuscript, there’s “always an easy option to make a ridiculous mistake.” Thus far, however, every claim of a Voynich solution-including both of last year’s-has been either ignored or debunked by other experts, media outlets, and Voynich obsessives. ![]() And earlier that year, Gerard Cheshire, an academic at the University of Bristol, published a peer-reviewed paper in the journal Romance Studies arguing that the script is a mix of languages he called “proto-Romance.” Just last summer, an anthropologist at Foothill College in California declared that the text was a “ vulgar Latin dialect” written in an obscure Roman shorthand. Known as the Voynich manuscript, it defies classification, much less comprehension.Īnd yet, over the years a steady stream of researchers has stepped up with new claims to have cracked its secrets. It’s an approximately 600-year-old mystery that continues to stump scholars, cryptographers, physicists, and computer scientists: a roughly 240-page medieval codex written in an indecipherable language, brimming with bizarre drawings of esoteric plants, naked women, and astrological symbols. ![]()
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