Comments on: The lost history of Dr. Alice E. Kober and her research on Linear B

The lost history of Dr. Alice E. Kober and her research on Linear B

filthy light thief — Tue, 14 May 2013 20:34:38 -0800

For more than 50 years, Linear B was an ancient language that hadn't given up its secret. Professor Bennett spent much of the 1940s hammering out a list of about 80 characters, and in 1951 he published the first definitive list of the signs of Linear B. The next year, archaeologist and Linear B enthusiast Michael Ventris finished "breaking" the code, with some hope from the research of Bennett, and another scholar named Alice Kober, but apparently she was rather hard to get on with and they went their separate ways. Except the magnitude of Doctor Kober's painstaking and self-sacrificing work is still largely unacknowledged.

Margalit Fox, an obituary writer for the New York Times, tapped into the vast digital repository at the University of Texas Libraries and found the lost history of Dr. Alice E. Kober. Alice was an overworked, underpaid classics professor who wrote her notes on tens of thousands of homemade index cards, fitted neatly into "file boxes" made from empty cigarette cartons, made during World War II when resources were limited. The result Fox's six years of research was The Riddle of the Labyrinth: The Quest to Crack an Ancient Code (Google books preview). From Fox's research, she discovered a researcher dedicated to decoding an ancient language, whose prior biographies were limited, inaccurately painting a picture of a cold academic.

By: filthy light thief

filthy light thief — Tue, 14 May 2013 20:35:46 -0800

Fun fact: Margalit also wrote the obituary for Prof. Bennett.

By: mykescipark

mykescipark — Tue, 14 May 2013 20:49:25 -0800

She's the Rosalind Franklin of Linear B. Fascinating as hell. Thank you.

By: Chocolate Pickle

Chocolate Pickle — Tue, 14 May 2013 21:06:22 -0800

In the Omnibus book "The Codebreakers", there's a chapter dedicated to cases where cryptology has served history. The Linear B case is one he devoted extensive time to, and I felt he gave Alice Kober considerable credit for her work.

By: Harvey Kilobit

Harvey Kilobit — Tue, 14 May 2013 21:19:00 -0800

The Decipherment Of Linear B is one of my favorite books; I've read it over and over with pleasure for many years. If you're at all interested in ancient scripts or codes, I recommend it. John Chadwick took on a potentially dry subject and made it super interesting. So I'm really excited now to read The Riddle Of The Labyrinth. When I had a chance to visit Mycenae in Greece, I skipped the monuments and the artifacts, and asked the museum curators to show me Linear B clay tablets!

By: filthy light thief

filthy light thief — Tue, 14 May 2013 21:23:54 -0800

Chocolate Pickle, thanks for that note. The Codebreakers sounds interesting, too. Here's a Google books preview, starting with the first mention of Kober.

By: brennen

brennen — Tue, 14 May 2013 22:34:31 -0800

The Decipherment Of Linear B is one of my favorite books; I've read it over and over with pleasure for many years. Just ordered. I'm looking forward to this one.

By: MartinWisse

MartinWisse — Tue, 14 May 2013 22:52:32 -0800

apparently she was rather hard to get on with That seems to be the case with very many pioneering female scientists, at least according to their male colleagues/biographers. You do wonder how much of this was projection, how much just having the necessary attitude to keep up in a male dominated field, not confirming to feminine stereotypes and how much was real.

By: BungaDunga

BungaDunga — Wed, 15 May 2013 00:14:20 -0800

There was a story on this on The World the other day, absolutely fascinating.

By: halcyonday

halcyonday — Wed, 15 May 2013 04:18:08 -0800

Ohh, fascinating! Fox's book is going right on my to-read list! Also Codebreakers and Decipherment.

By: ersatz

ersatz — Wed, 15 May 2013 04:24:51 -0800

For a second I misread this as Linear A and started getting all giddy.

By: steef

steef — Wed, 15 May 2013 05:41:09 -0800

Holy Cretan cats. Her papers consist of "58 boxes, and 6 out of 10 drawers in a vertical file cabinet; approximately 188,825 items (28.0 linear feet/13.7 cubic feet)." Including the handmade index cards in cigarette cartons. "She took extra care in cutting a greeting card used as a tabbed divider, perfectly centering a fawn lying in a bed of flowers." That is my organizational porn fix for the day.

By: matildaben

matildaben — Wed, 15 May 2013 05:57:31 -0800

Emmett L. Bennett was my uncle, FWIW.

By: SinAesthetic

SinAesthetic — Wed, 15 May 2013 06:35:31 -0800

just having the necessary attitude to keep up in a male dominated field, not confirming to feminine stereotypes YES this how much was real probably almost none I don't wonder about it one bit actually MartinWisse, except to wonder why more guys during this socially toxic post-WWII time period weren't "accidentally" set on fire by rightfully furious women yielding flaming chafing dishes full of Velveeta dip.

By: filthy light thief

filthy light thief — Wed, 15 May 2013 06:57:54 -0800

MartinWisse, Margalit Fox seems to cast the "hard to get along with" element of Dr. Kober as the fact that she was so dedicated to her work, and others think Ventris might have been intimidated by academia, making collaborations hard. steef, the hand-made nature of her "filing cards" was due in part to supply shortages in WW II, but the attention to detail was all Dr. Kober.

By: Jehan

Jehan — Wed, 15 May 2013 07:50:57 -0800

I thought Kober's discovery of triplets was well known and well acknowledged?

...others think Ventris might have been intimidated by academia, making collaborations hard.

Ventris sought to understand and share what other workers in the field knew. He sent round questionnaires and then put the results together and sent them out as "research notes" or something similar. Indeed, some have said that his background in architecture made him more open to collaborative work than academics.

By: homunculus

homunculus — Wed, 15 May 2013 11:20:51 -0800

Great post, filthy light thief. Thanks!

By: filthy light thief

filthy light thief — Wed, 15 May 2013 11:32:03 -0800

For a second I misread this as Linear A and started getting all giddy. Sorry, Linear A, and its predecessor, Cretan hieroglyphs, are still undeciphered.

By: monocyte

monocyte — Wed, 15 May 2013 12:54:37 -0800

how much was real probably almost none I don't wonder about it one bit actually MartinWisse, except to wonder why more guys during this socially toxic post-WWII time period weren't "accidentally" set on fire by rightfully furious women yielding flaming chafing dishes full of Velveeta dip. As toxic and depersonalizing as the period was to women, isn't it also depersonalizing to assume that it's impossible that she could be difficult to work with by our modern, 20XX, standards? Any (or none) of the above could exist as independent, interacting quantities in how she was seen at the time and today.

By: ersatz

ersatz — Wed, 15 May 2013 16:08:00 -0800

Sorry, Linear A, and its predecessor, Cretan hieroglyphs, are still undeciphered. That's why I was getting giddy; I thought we might have breaking news :)

By: SinAesthetic

SinAesthetic — Fri, 17 May 2013 10:51:45 -0800

Sure monocyte, that's why I threw in a "probably". :) But in the end, there is a not-insignificant difference between possibility and probability, no? Or so the sweet, sweet, myopically mathematical folks who make sure I never have to fully understand my own experimental data statistics tell me...(may they live ten thousand years).