[Other] James Robert Child passed away

[bi3mw]

I recently read an obituary to James Robert Child You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. . It said that he had been working on the VMS for decades ( as a Linguist ).

He spent decades, in particular, analyzing and translating a 15th century handwritten and illustrated codex known as the Voynich manuscript, working with a colleague into his 90s to create and update a website.

I didn't know about this work. Now I see his website for the first time. The adress is:

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[ReneZ]

That's sad.

I had been in contact with the said colleague, hoping to have a chance to talk to James Child.
He was probably the last surviving participant to the famous workshop by D'Imperio, where Currier presented his equally famous findings.

That's now 43 years ago.

[-JKP-]

Thank you bi3 and René. I have never seen it either.

Sadly, it's another substitution cipher which, as far as I can tell, gives no thought to the way Voynichese diverges from natural language in the frequency and position of the transliterated letters (I hope I'm wrong, but that is what I see so far).

I'll give it a better look this evening after work, maybe there's more to it than appears at first glance.


And my condolences to Mr. Child's family.

[Anton]

I haven't heard about James Child's work before, and this is a sad occasion to first know of it.

I'm joining in the condolences to the family and friends.

[bi3mw]

Besides the website there is also a paper from 2002 ( revised version ) You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.. Child makes clear in it:

It is not a cipher, and not an artificial language, as has also been suggested. The distribution of vowel and consonant letters, some of which are surely Latin letters, makes a cipher improbable.

Instead he said that the manuscript was written in a "hitherto unknown North Germanic dialect". That's what we see on the website.

[bi3mw]

For the sake of completeness, here is a paper from 2007:

Child, Jim (2009-06-16). "Again, The Voynich Manuscript. 2007.". Web.archive.org. Archived from the original on 2009-06-16.

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[davidjackson]

My condolences to the family of Mr Child. He has been on the periphery of Voynich research for many years.

May I take this opportunity to ask members, out of respect, not to use this thread to discuss his research, but to open a new thread if they want to.