"Friar and the Cipher: Roger Bacon and the Unsolved Mystery of the Most Unusual Manuscript in the World" by Lawrence Goldstone, Nancy Goldstone
First Edition
Broadway, Doubleday, Random House | 2005 | ISBN: 0767914732 0767914724 B000SZS446 B000FCJZ54 9780385515153 9780767914734 | 473 pages | PDF/epub/mobi | 6/6/6 MB
This book's highlight is the story of a mysterious book discovered in 1912 and named for its owner, Wilfrid Voynich. The manuscript has a coded text enhanced by hundreds of illustrations depicting exotic plants, astronomical phenomena and strange "strings of tiny naked women cavorting in a variety of fountains, waterfalls, and pools." Various experts have attributed the manuscript to Bacon—but as it has kept its secrets from some of the world's greatest cryptanalysts, including some in the CIA and England's MI-8, as well as the largest supercomputers in the world, the attribution remains speculative. But these efforts make a compelling story for readers of the history of science and of code breaking.