Riddle of the Script: The Story of Linear A & B

Linear B, the script discovered in 1900 by English archaeologist Arthur Evans, (he's the archaelogist who discovered the great palace he called the Palace at Minos) was never deciphered until the mid 20th century. Margalit Fox, writing for the Telegraph, details the fascinating story explaining how the script was deciphered by a 21 year-old graduate student, Alice Kober, who worked on the problem for years.  Fox says "over the years, Kober cut and annotated 180,000 cards, storing them in empty cigarette cartons, the one paper product of which, sadly, she seemed to have no shortage."

Kober died before completely deciphering the script.  But her work helped another young student, Michael Ventris, figure out how the script worked.  Fox just released a book about the discovery called "The Riddle of the Labyrinth". My thanks to Jeff Feinstein for sending me the link to this story.