Nearly all Voynich researchers (I think) will have heard of William F. Friedman: it was WFF who formed the First Study Group during the Second World War, who set computer transcription and analysis of the Voynich Manuscript in motion, and even got Brigadier John Tiltman involved.
But what of his wife Elizebeth (they married in 1917)? Actually, she was a highly accomplished code-breaker in her own right, and it was she who introduced WFF to cryptology: during the First World War, the pair of them were directors of an unofficial US Government code-breaking team. She moved on to breaking thousands of rum runners’ codes in the 1930s and the famous Velvalee Dickinson “Doll Woman” Japanese spying case in the 1940s, all the while researching, writing and even occasionally lecturing on such cipher mysteries as the Beale Papers and the Voynich Manuscript. There’s a nice summary of her life in the NSA Hall of Honor (she was posthumously inducted in 1999).
Similar to the way Chaucer dominated the relationship between John Matthews Manly and Edith Rickert (here, here & here), Shakespeare was a recurrent theme for the Friedmans. The couple first met while employed by Mrs Elizabeth Wells Gallop to hunt for the Baconian ciphers allegedly embedded in Shakespeare’s works: while Elizebeth Friedman returned to the theme of Shakespeare in the 1950s, finally concluding that the person masquerading as Shakespeare was none other than – shock horror – William Shakespeare himself.
William Friedman’s papers were donated to the Marshall Foundation in 1969 (WFF died the same year), while Elizebeth Friedman’s papers were donated to the same foundation after her death in 1980.
Anyway, just in case anyone happens to find themselves near the Marshall Foundation in Lexington VA with an unaccountably strong urge to go through her papers relating to cipher mysteries such as the Voynich Manuscript, here’s a brief listing of things I’d be fascinated to read:-
Box 7, File 17 – Philological Quarterly article on W.F. Friedman and the Voynich Manuscript.
Box 8, File 23 – Beale Treasure Material
Box 10, File 30 – Voynich Correspondence
Box 10, File 31 – Voynich Notes
Box 10, File 32 – Voynich Material
Box 10, File 33 – Article: “The Voynich Manuscript: A Scholarly Mystery” (parts 1-3) [by Mary D’Imperio, if I remember correctly]
Box 10, File 34 – Philological Quarterly: WFF and Voynich – October 1970
Box 10, File 35 – Voynich Seminar Proceedings 1976
Box 13, File 22 – WFF – John M. Manly Correspondence
Box 18, File 34 – ESF – Voynich Manuscript Article
Good grief! I just made my “excuses” as to why I couldn’t sign up for your next forum.
Howsomever, THIS I may just be able to do. I have to check the feasibility of train and accomodations with my husband. We live in Calif. He has relatives living in a nearby state (NC).
Things I need to know B4 commiting to any contact with the Marshall Foundation:
Do I need credentials for access to their files? Or referrals from you or other professionals/scholars?
I am a paralegal with expertise in records management (public records in particular).
My husband just came home. First priority is to run this by him. More later.
[An Editor’s note] Zimansky, Curt, ‘William Friedman and the Voynich Manuscript’, Philological Quarterly, Vol.49 (1970), No.4 (Oct), pp433-448.
also
Friedman, William F. and Elizebeth S., ‘Acrostics Anagrams and Chaucer’, Philological Quarterly, Vol 38 (1959), pp.1-21
some or all may be referenced again in issues of
A Bibliography of Modern Studies Founded by Ronald S. Crane Compiled for the Philological Quarterly [numerous editions, e.g. 1951-1956 – Foreword by Gwin J. Kolb and Curt A. Zimansky..]
Zimansky says of an article which Elizebeth wrote for the Washington Post (Aug 5, 1962, Section E pp1,5) that “this is probably the best description of the manuscript and statement of the problem available.” (Phil.Quarterly article of 1970 cited above p.439).
It’s not likely that we (my husband and I) would be able to go from one coast to the other. So, could I suggest a way you, Nick, might be able obtain material from their archives?
You might be able to contact a university near the PhilSoc and see if they have a student/intern who could collect the material you are requesting. I WISH I could help!
What is the quote I’m thinking of — that ends in “—pigs could fly…….Sorry!
I’m going to Esther Molen’s post from here. I want to clarify my findings re the Michitonese phraseology appearing in numerous volumes of Kircher’s works. (So far, Stanford U and Oklahoma U have large collections of Kircher’s books. I’ll be cyber-cruising for a while. I’ll keep y’all posted.
… or you could offer to do a swap of copies. Copies of material you have collected about the Friedmans for copies of those documents? Maybe.
bdid1dr: I really wouldn’t expect anyone to travel to the Marshall Foundation on my behalf to have a look at Elizebeth Friedman’s papers – half (if not more) of the time, I post things like this to the blog as a kind of “note to future self”, so that if I happen to be travelling that way I can remember to call in and have a look, and know what all the shelfmarks are etc. Having said that, there’s always a (small, but finite) chance that a Cipher Mysteries reader just happens to live nearby and would see dropping by as a jolly Voynich-related excursion, you never know, eh? 😉
As far as my wishing, I have one of the most indulgent of men for a husband. I am blessed. Oh, the expression I was trying to remember: “If wishes were horses, beggars would ride”.
Ennyway, fersure, if I know of anyone headed Virginia-way, I’ll give ’em the nod! Am I using any of this terminology in a way that makes sense?
Cheers!
Nick:
As luck would have it, I visited the Marshall Library a while back to conduct research on The Beale Papers. The staff there could not have been more helpful! I copied one letter from Elizabeth Friedman to Clayton Hart, a devoted Beale treasure hunter. Ron Gervais published the letter in his website, Beale Ciphers Analyses and you are welcome to share it with your audience:
http://www.angelfire.com/pro/bealeciphers/Page23.htm
The letter provides a hint of Mrs. Friedman’s familiarity with the Beale mystery as well as a window into the early days of the enigma. Continued best wishes with your great web site.
So nice of you to mention another female in relation to Voynich studies. I was beginning to fear that d’Imperio would become a kind of ‘token female’ in this area.
Diane: hey! I included links to various posts on Edith Rickerts too, y’know. 🙂
ive tried to contact the Marshall Foundation to evaluate my book BEALE TREASURE MAP TO CIPHER SUCCESS
ISBN. 9781780353470. I believe its worth looking into no other solution has ever been published with such promise
of proof in the decodes that E.A. Poe wrote the Beale papers.
Stan Clayton.
Nick,
Coming from an utter non-cryptographer, this question is honest though I suspect it may be stupid. Why is it that when the text of the Voynich is discussed in terms of medieval and Renaissance ciphers (e.g. your recent post on 15thC cryptography) does no one ever mention what tests the Friedman group ran, and which types of cipher they tested and found inapplicable?
It seems logical that they would have run through the usual texts and tested for Alberti’s method etc.. Did they? Do we know?
How about writing us a review and evaluation of the Friedman group’s work over … how many years?
Diane: the various study groups transcribed a number of (mainly herbal?) pages and ran straightforward tests on them. Considering the limits of computer technology at the time, these would have been entropy calculations, index of coincidence (which William Friedman invented), pattern finding, and similar tests.
Of course, the lowliest of smartphones could do all of these tests in a fraction of a second, so it is only really of historical interest now.
But it was already enough to rule out simple monoalphabetic and all known polyalphabetic ciphers, I’m sure.
ILIKE THE IDEA OF
https://www.marshallfoundation.org/library/collection/elizebeth-smith-friedman-collection/#!/collection=84
Working link to ESF papers at the George C. Marshall Foundation in Lexington, VA.