Skeptalk: The Voynich Manuscript

Join the Bay Area Skeptics as they celebrate the centenary of rediscovering the Voynich Manuscript, "The Most Mysterious Manuscript in the World."

Written entirely in what looks like a cipher, the Voynich manuscript has never been decrypted.  It is hand-written and hand-illustrated, probably from Europe in the 1400s. Although ornate, it is still far plainer than the elaborately decorated manuscripts famous in the art world.

It might be a hoax. The book has many very curious properties.  The writing is extremely tantalizing.

The possible originators, intermediate owners, and scholars, include some of the most fascinating characters of the last several centuries: Roger Bacon, John Dee, Emperor Rudolph II, Athanasius Kircher, Wilfrid
Voynich, and Luigi Serafini.  And now, us.

The Wikipedia article gives a decent outline.  A web search turns up a great many studies, digressions, and speculations.  Fresh approaches are welcome!

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Speaker Norman Sperling is a board member of the Bay Area Skeptics. He has been a planetarium director, a designer and inventor of astronomical instruments, an editor of websites, magazines, and books, and author of hundreds of articles and blog posts.  He joined the Bay Area Skeptics in 1984, becoming a board
member in 1986 and vice-chair in 1991.  He teaches astronomy for the University of California at Berkeley.  He edits the science humor magazine, The Journal of Irreproducible Results, www.jir.com, and blogs at www.everythingintheuniverse.com.  Interested in the Voynich Manuscript since reading about it in 1962, he examined the manuscript in person in 1980, has no new answers, but loves the mystery.