Penn Biographies

William Romaine Newbold (1865-1926)

• A.B. 1887, Ph.D. 1891, LL.D. (hon.) 1921
• Instructor in Latin, 1889-1891
• Lecturer and Professor of Philosophy, 1890-1891, 1892-1907
• Dean of Graduate School, 1896-1904
• Adam Seybert Professor of Intellectual and Moral Philosophy, 1907-1926
  
  

Author and antiquarian

William Romaine Newbold was born in Wilmington, Delaware on November 20, 1865 to William Allibone Newbold and Martha Smith Baily. Newbold attended the Cheltenham Military Academy in suburban Philadelphia where he developed a love for all things classical. He enrolled at Penn in the fall of 1884 as a sophomore with the Class of 1887.

According to the 1887 yearbook, Newbold was an honors student during each of his undergraduate years and made a name for himself as an academic talent, graduating with prizes in both Latin and Philosophy. He even taught an informal class on Hebrew in only his second semester on campus, a very impressive achievement to say the least. He played the role of Nikarchos in the Greek Play and was a member of the Senior Book Committee and the Philosophical Seminar.

Following his graduation from Penn, Newbold returned to the Cheltenham Military Academy as a teacher of Latin while beginning work on his Ph.D. In 1889, after two years teaching at the Cheltenham Military Academy, Newbold returned to Penn as an instructor in Latin. The following year, Newbold was named lecturer on philosophy while he maintained his position as instructor in Latin. He earned his Ph.D. in 1891, his dissertation was entitled, "Prolegomena to a Theory of Belief." After earning his Ph.D., Newbold temporarily left Penn to study at the University of Berlin in Germany.

When he returned from Europe in 1892, Newbold resumed his duties as an instructor in Latin and a lecturer in philosophy. In 1894, Newbold was promoted to Assistant Professor of Latin. Two years later, he was named the Dean of the Graduate School at Penn, a position he held until 1904. During his tenure as Dean, the admissions standards to the Graduate School were raised, and the stature of Penn's administration as a whole was raised as well. In 1903, Newbold was promoted to Professor of Philosophy. Four years later, he was named the Adam Seybert Professor of Intellectual and Moral Philosophy, a position he held until his death. During World War I, Newbold taught the political and historical causes of the war to the Reserve Officers Training Corps at Penn. In 1921, he received the honorary degree of Doctor of Laws (LL.D.) from Penn.

While serving at Penn, Newbold also briefly held several special lecturer positions on the east coast. In 1920 he was a lecturer at the Bohlen Foundation in Philadelphia. The following year he was a lecturer at the Mary Scott Newbold Foundation also in Philadelphia. In 1923 and 1925, Newbold was a special lecturer on the history of the early church at the General Theological Seminary (Episcopalian), in New York City. At the General Seminary, he was so well liked that he was offered a full-time faculty position, a very rare offer for a layman. Staying true to his alma mater, however, Newbold declined the offer to continue his career at Penn.

During his lifetime, Newbold was most well known for his research and discoveries relating to antiquities. At one point, Newbold claimed to have found the burial place of St. Peter and St. Paul. At another point, he claimed to have deciphered some cave writing from the early Common Era. In both cases, later archeologists showed Newbold was mistaken in his findings.

Newbold's biggest "discovery" was his decipherment of a coded text, now commonly referred to as the Voynich Manuscript, he believed had been written by Francis Bacon, a thirteenth century English monk, scientist, astrologer, and inventor. According to Newbold's complex system for deciphering the code, Bacon had made numerous scientific discoveries which no one else would "rediscover" for centuries. When he died in 1926, Newbold's version of the meaning of the code in the Voynich Manuscript was seen as the truth. Several years later, however, other archeologists began to look at Newbold's method with a critical eye. They correctly noted that Newbold's system was faulty, unreliable, and based on a number of unproved assumptions. Newbold's interpretation of the Voynich Manuscript was eventually completely disregarded by archeologists and now many archeologists do not even believe that Francis Bacon was the author of the manuscript in question.

None of these questions regarding the validity of his decipherment surfaced during his lifetime when Newbold was a member in good standing of numerous academic societies including the Classical Club of Philadelphia, the American Philosophical Society, the Society of Biblical Literature and the American Oriental Society.

Newbold died on September 6, 1926 shortly before he was to begin teaching at the start of the 1926-1927 school year. His memorial service was held in College Hall and was very well attended. Speakers included the University Provost, Josiah H. Penniman, and Newbold's classmate in the Class of 1887, James A. Montgomery.