how we cracked a 400-year-old alchemical cipher
- Written by: Richard Bean, Research Fellow, The University of Queensland
What secret alchemical knowledge could be so important it required sophisticated encryption?
The setting was Amsterdam, 2019. A conference organised by the Society for the History of Alchemy and Chemistry had just concluded at the Embassy of the Free Mind, in a lecture hall opened by historical-fiction author Dan Brown.
At the conference, Science...