Wilfrid Voynich was a Polish antiquarian bookseller born in what is now Lithuania (then part of the Russian Empire). As a young man he joined the independence movement against the Russian Empire and was exiled to Siberia, but escaped to London. He went on to succeed as a bookseller, with shops in London and New York.
The mysterious manuscript he acquired in Italy in 1912 later came to be called the Voynich Manuscript after him. Voynich hoped all his life to see it deciphered, but never did. His wife, Ethel Lilian Voynich, was a writer known for the novel The Gadfly.
