Quote:
Originally Posted by Bookpossum
However, as Bookworm_Girl said, something like that needs a team of people who bring different skills to the problem.
Despite Fox's claim that Kober may have solved the riddle, it seems to me that she was not a person able to make the intuitive leap that Ventris did. She was a person obsessed with detail. It needs both sorts to deal with a puzzle like this.
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Yes, it was a task which was solved because these various people together (even though they worked independently) each contributed specialised skills to the problem.
While I would like to think that Kober would have solved the problem had she lived, the fact is we can never know. Perhaps, despite all her remarkable academic brilliance, she might not have had the flash of inspiration that came to Ventris. For instance, Ventris independently discovered that a particular symbol was a coordinate conjunction. This was an important factor which led to his insight. Kober had (unknown to Ventris) made the same discovery three years earlier and had not made any intuitive leap.
I do think that Kober was treated badly simply because she was a woman and not taken seriously. But it is worth mentioning that Ventris was also dismissed as a “serious” researcher because he was an architect and thus not a “true” academic. It took some time before his finding was accepted.