Wilfrid Voynich (born Michał Habdank-Wojnicz; 12 November [O.S. 31 October] 1865 – 19 March 1930) was a Polish revolutionary, antiquarian and bibliophile. Voynich operated one of the largest rare book businesses in the world. He is remembered as the eponym of the Voynich manuscript.
Life
Michał Habdank-Wojnicz was born in the town of Telšiai in present-day Lithuania, then part of the Russian Empire, into a Polish noble family. The "Habdank" part of his surname is the name of a Polish heraldic clan. He was the son of a Polish petty official (titular counsellor).
He attended a gimnazjum in Suwałki (a town in northeastern Poland), then studied at the university of Warsaw, St. Petersburg, and Moscow. He graduated from Moscow University in chemistry and became a licensed pharmacist.
In 1885, in Warsaw, Wojnicz joined Ludwik Waryński's revolutionary organization, Proletariat. In 1886, after a failed attempt to free fellow-conspirators Piotr Bardowski (1846–1886) and Stanisław Kunicki (1861–1886), who had both been sentenced to death, from the Warsaw Citadel, he was arrested by the Russian police. In 1887, he was sent to penal servitude at Tunka near Irkutsk in Siberia.
Whilst in Siberia, Voynich acquired a working knowledge of eighteen different languages, albeit not well.
In June 1890 he escaped from Siberia and travelling west by train got to Hamburg, eventually arriving in London in October 1890.
