Wilfrid Voynich

Born Michał Habdank-Wojnicz on 31 October 1865, Voynich began as a revolutionary before reinventing himself as an antiquarian and bibliophile. He built one of the largest rare book operations in the world, trading in texts that spanned centuries and continents. Somewhere in that trade he acquired a medieval codex written in an unknown script, filled with strange drawings no scholar could parse. It carried his name forward long after his death on 19 March 1930, less for the empire of books he moved than for the one book no one can read.