Emily Chan
In 1912, a Polish book dealer named Wilfrid Voynich purchased a manuscript dating back to the early 15th century.
It consisted of roughly 240 pages filled with strange, handwritten text in an unknown language and various illustrations of people, imaginary plants, symbols, and other bizarre images. The book has been dubbed the Voynich Manuscript, and to this day, experts can’t seem to figure out what it’s about.
So, who was Voynich, and how did he get his hands on the manuscript in the first place? Voynich was born on November 12, 1865, in a town called Telšiai, which is now a part of Lithuania. He studied at the universities of Warsaw, St. Petersburg, and Moscow, earning a degree in chemistry from the latter.
The Russian police arrested him in 1885 for trying to free members of a revolutionary movement. Voynich was then sent to a work camp in Siberia, but he escaped in 1890. By the end of the year, he was living in London.
He continued to support anti-czarist organizations until the death of a fellow revolutionary in 1895. That’s when he shifted his focus to selling rare and antique books. In 1898, he opened his first bookstore in London’s Soho Square.
He got married and became a citizen of Britain in 1904. Then, in 1912, a religious group from Ghislieri College in Italy held an auction of books from their library. Voynich secured several volumes, including the manuscript.
Two years later, he opened a second bookstore in New York. For years, he tried to decode the text in the manuscript, but he died in 1930, leaving it unsolved. After his death, the manuscript was passed to his wife, who gave it to a close friend, Anne Nill, upon her death in 1960.
The following year, Nill sold the book to Hans P. Kraus, an antique book dealer. Kraus eventually donated the book to Yale University in 1969, where it has been housed in the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library ever since.
Since its rediscovery in 1912, many scholars have attempted to decipher the manuscript, but they were all unsuccessful. The thick manuscript contains some pages that fold out into complicated diagrams.
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