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Robert Firth's whereabouts?

Posted: Sat May 02, 2020 7:23 am
by syzygy
Hi all,

I have a question to which I couldn't find a fitting sub-board, so I thought I'd take the virginity of this one instead to catch your attention. :-)

I'm trying to hunt down one Robert Firth who has published a series of most interesting research notes regarding the VM back in the nineties, but all I could find was a mirror hosted by Jorge Stolfi of notes compiled by Jim Reeds. (https://www.ic.unicamp.br/~stolfi/voynich/mirror/firth/)

Does anybody know if Robert is still about, pursuing the VM?

TIA,

Cheers,

Elmar/syzygy

Re: Robert Firth's whereabouts?

Posted: Mon May 04, 2020 9:00 am
by proto57
Hi Elmar: I also did some searching, when I saw your post.

First of all, Stolfi's mirror, of Reed's page, of Firth Notes, is of the page still at the Voynich.net site: http://voynich.net/reeds/index.html

You of course saw Firth's address linked there, too. That address from when Mr. Firth was on the staff at Carnegie Mellon University:

https://www.cmu.edu/

Perhaps you could drop a note to their Human Resources or faculty departments? They do still list his works while at the University:

https://resources.sei.cmu.edu/library/a ... horid=4635

But you probably saw all that. I can't find anything recent on Mr. Firth, either. It seems the last activity relating to the Voynich, or really anything, is about 1990 or thereabouts. But people drop off the map for many reasons, and perhaps he is simply retired, and available to have a chat. But of course the last contact being 30 years ago, anything is possible.

Let us know how it goes...

Rich.

Re: Robert Firth's whereabouts?

Posted: Thu May 07, 2020 9:52 am
by proto57
I'm posting a "bump", in case anyone on the List has heard from Mr. Firth... or is Mr. Firth, for that matter!

Rich.

Re: Robert Firth's whereabouts?

Posted: Sat May 09, 2020 8:21 am
by syzygy
Hi Rich,

No, I hadn't seen the address linked from there, since I was using Stolfi's "original mirror", rather than Jim's "reflected mirror". (Nothing is ever simple in connection with the VM, is it? ;-)) Thanks for that pointer!

I have found this page: https://dl.acm.org/profile/81100451350 which doesn't look too promising. It seems like his last publication dates from 25 years ago... :-/

But thanks anyway!

Cheers,

syzygy/Elmar