Projects:2016s1-141 Cracking the Voynich manuscript code

Topic

Cracking the Voynich manuscript code

Supervisors

Prof. Derek Abbott

Dr. Brian Ng

Team members

Ruihang Feng

Yaxin Hu

Project Introduction

Background

The Voynich the manuscript was created in the first half of the fifteenth century (probably between 1404 and 1438) [1]. No one today knows what it says or who wrote it. The book is in a strange alphabet. At 1912, a book collector named Wilfried Voynich found it in an Italian Jesuit college [1]. Since this book cannot be read, it is divided into six different sections by illustrations with different styles and images:

a) Herbal: There are one or more plants on each page, which is a format of European herbals [2].

b) Astronomical There are circular diagrams such as suns, moons, and stars which suggest this part as something about astronomy or astrology [2].

c) Biological Mostly naked women show that this part should be biological section [2].

d) Cosmological Circular diagrams of obscure nature make this section as cosmological section [2].

e) Pharmaceutical Drawings of isolated plants parts and objects resembling apothecary jars show that this section should be something about pharmaceutical [2].

f) Recipes This part are full pages of text in short paragraphs [2].

Motivation

With statistical methods, trying to carry out a project that is used to investigate the language and linguistics of an unknown book is an attempt that may beyond excellent. Trying to find any features of relationships and patterns of the Voynich manuscript could be used to decode the unknown text with unknown languages. It may contribute significant progress in attempting decode a part of the book. The outcomes can be used to further linguistic or language decryption, such as information decoding, search engines and data mining. They can also be used in specific applications such as Google, Turn-it-in, Google translate, Yahoo, and Grammarly.

Project Aim

The aim of this project is to search the text and determine whether there are any possible features that can be used to decode the Voynich manuscript using statistical methods. The investigation of languages and linguistics is required to be processed with the unknown text. Furthermore, crack initial digits of the Voynich manuscript and determine the possible letters which may stand for digits. But, it is not necessary to fully decode the Voynich manuscript since it is not possible to be done in a one-year project.