The Voynich Ninja

In "The Voynich Manuscript - An elegant Enigma" Jeffrey Krischer is introduced in chapter 6.7. At one point it says: "At the time of writing his paper Krischer planned to carry out further studies."

I have not heard of this Voynich researcher yet. All I could find were the following entries:

JSTOR, Directory of Scholars Active
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*L493. Analysis of the Voynich Manuscript
Chief investigator: Jeffrey P. Krischer, 380-A Great Road, Acton, MA 01720.
Scope: To perform an analysis of the language of the Voynich manuscript in an effort to
determine the grammar and usage for translation.
Type of computer used: IBM 360/65, PDP 1, CDC 6400. Language and level: FORTRAN,
MIDAS.

Does anyone know of any publications by this researcher ? After all, he is mentioned in one breath with Friedman, Tiltmann, Currier etc..

Edit:
Here is a find on a paper by Krischer from 1969:
Krischer, J. "The Voynich Manuscript." A term paper for Linguistics 205, Harvard University, Spring 1969.
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I believe this is the same researcher as Jeffrey P Krischer, who is an epidemiologist on diabetes and director of the Health Informatics Institute at the University of South Florida. Judging from the sources quoted, his Voynich work was an undergraduate project at Harvard. I would be doubtful that he did further work on the Voynich.

Forgive me if this is wrong of me to find this amusing but did you know that if you Google the title "The Voynich Manuscript - An elegant Enigma", the first two results are (1) for the US National Security Agency (NSA) and (2) for the US Dept. of Defense site Defense Technical Information Center. And if you search for "Voynich" on the NSA site, there are 17 results (including the full text of Mary D'Imperio's paper).   

You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. mentions Krischer a few times on his Voynich.nu site (notably You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.). It isn't much but he does say it is Jeffrey P. Krischer. In Rene's Bibliography he lists Krischer's paper as one presented at the seminar in mathematical linguistics at Harvard.

Here are a few more references I found (search for "krischer" in each to see the specifics):

You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. (on PDF pg 133, item L493 covers Krischer's paper briefly in connection with another one by Tiltman)

You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. (Bibliography notes Krischer's paper as 73 pages plus appendix)


You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. (Bibliography notes Krischer's paper was once listed in the Gordon McKay Library catalogue (Harvard) but isn't any longer...I checked this and can confirm it isn't)

I concur with Emma's assessment and found this article that supports it: 
You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. (the bottom of the article states Krischer received a PhD in applied math from Harvard but doesn't say what year)

The same Jeffrey Krischer PhD is currently listed as a faculty member (and division chief) on the You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. site and an email address is provided but it seems likely his Voynich research days are so far behind him, you probably wouldn't get a response. I found several papers in various places online that he authored, co-authored or otherwise contributed to but they were all in the field of medicine.

I did a little more digging (dog with a bone sort of thing) and while I haven't yet found Krischer's 1969 Harvard paper (nor do I expect to), I did find his curriculum vitae on the USF Health website via a Google search result:

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The link accesses the CV Word document (.docx) directly (i.e. downloads it), not a web page where it is housed. It is 51 pages. It includes his birthdate, birthplace and education but the bulk of it is his publications list, which goes back as far as 1970. Sorry, but no mention of Voynich.

Ages ago, Jim Reeds wrote to someone called Jeffrey Krischer who had become a medical doctor, asking if he was the one who write the Harvard paper, which he confirmed. When Jim then asked for a copy, there was no further response.

Rumour has it, that he experimented with Hidden Markov chains, and this technique was at that time considered of some security relevance, so the paper was 'removed from sight'. I am not sure how reliable that information is.

Mary D'Imperio did a similar investigation, using an alogirthm called PTAH. This was classified for some time, but has now been declassified, even though some parts of the text have been redacted. Recent news events should make that this terminology is known to most people by now...

If the above is true, he would not have been motivated to continue this work. At the same time, much progress has been made in the area of Hidden Markov chains, though this is not too well documented.

(08-07-2023, 05:31 AM)ReneZ Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.Ages ago, Jim Reeds wrote to someone called Jeffrey Krischer who had become a medical doctor, asking if he was the one who write the Harvard paper, which he confirmed. When Jim then asked for a copy, there was no further response.

I have written to Mr. Krischer by email and asked for available papers on the VMS from the seventies. Let's see if I get a reply.

To this day, he has not contacted me. Too bad, but probably he is no longer in the topic himself after such a long time.

Well, it was worth a try. Who knows? Maybe he has put that in his past. Or maybe his work back then became classified and may still be whether it still needs to be or not. It's also possible he has been under some sort of non-disclosure agreement or order not to discuss it and that could still be in effect. And if that was an NSA or DOD directive, he would certainly never risk discussing it.

I happen to work in HR for a U.S. company that is subject to ITAR regulations so I know only too well how far reaching and convoluted and contradictory, both within the regulations themselves and in the relations between the different government agencies, such government restrictions can be. The consequences for breaking those only result in debarrment, fines and/or jail time (as opposed to consequences you see in movies and on TV) but that can be incentive enough to drive all of us who are subject to the regulations to madness trying to avoid non-compliance. Ask me sometime what an export is. Jeez.

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We may sooner crack the VM code than you might get a response to your email.