{"id":130093,"date":"2021-11-05T20:23:49","date_gmt":"2021-11-06T03:23:49","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2021\/11\/deciphering-the-philosophers-stone-how-scientists-cracked-a-400-year-old-alchemical-cipher"},"modified":"2021-11-05T20:23:49","modified_gmt":"2021-11-06T03:23:49","slug":"deciphering-the-philosophers-stone-how-scientists-cracked-a-400-year-old-alchemical-cipher","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2021\/11\/deciphering-the-philosophers-stone-how-scientists-cracked-a-400-year-old-alchemical-cipher","title":{"rendered":"Deciphering the Philosophers\u2019 Stone: How Scientists Cracked a 400-Year-Old Alchemical Cipher"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a class=\"aligncenter blog-photo\" href=\"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog.images\/deciphering-the-philosophers-stone-how-scientists-cracked-a-400-year-old-alchemical-cipher2.jpg\"><\/a><\/p>\n<p>At the conference, Science History Institute postdoctoral researcher Megan Piorko presented a curious manuscript belonging to English alchemists John Dee (1527\u20131608) and his son Arthur Dee (1579\u20131651). In the pre-modern world, alchemy was a means to understand nature through ancient secret knowledge and <a href=\"https:\/\/www.science.org\/doi\/abs\/10.1126\/science.332.6032.914\">chemical experiment<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>Within Dee\u2019s alchemical manuscript was a cipher table, followed by encrypted ciphertext under the heading \u201cHermeticae Philosophiae medulla\u201d\u2014or Marrow of the Hermetic Philosophy. The table would end up being a valuable tool in decrypting the cipher, but could only be interpreted correctly once the hidden \u201ckey\u201d was found.<\/p>\n<p>It was during post-conference drinks in a dimly lit bar that Megan decided to investigate the mysterious alchemical cipher\u2014with the help of her colleague, University of Graz postdoctoral researcher Sarah Lang.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>At the conference, Science History Institute postdoctoral researcher Megan Piorko presented a curious manuscript belonging to English alchemists John Dee (1527\u20131608) and his son Arthur Dee (1579\u20131651). In the pre-modern world, alchemy was a means to understand nature through ancient secret knowledge and chemical experiment. Within Dee\u2019s alchemical manuscript was a cipher table, followed by [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":513,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[19,1625],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-130093","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-chemistry","category-encryption"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/130093","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/513"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=130093"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/130093\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=130093"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=130093"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=130093"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}