William Romaine Newbold

William Romaine Newbold (November 20, 1865 – September 26, 1926) was an American philosopher who held the Adam Seybert Professor of Intellectual and Moral Philosophy chair at the University of Pennsylvania from 1907 to 1926. Newbold was considered an authority on the psychology of religion, Christian Gnosticism, and cryptography. Newbold became most noted for his decoding of the Voynich Manuscript, later disproven.

Early life Newbold was born 1865 in Wilmington, Delaware to William Allibone Newbold and Martha S Bailey. He graduated from the University of Pennsylvania in 1887.

Newbold was interested in parapsychology. In the early 1890s he attended séances with the medium Leonora Piper.

William also had an interest in genealogy. He was a descendant of the Newbold family of Hackenthorpe, now part of the city of Sheffield. He paid a visit to the village shortly before his death, where he visited Hackenthorpe Hall, built

Personal life Newbold died suddenly in Philadelphia on 26 September 1926 of acute indigestion.