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625 people in 95 mysteries

Researchers, witnesses, makers and the missing: everyone the mysteries' records name, with what they did in each.

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Rafał WieczorekChemist (Warsaw); Berlin tablet dating and glyph statistics

Rajesh P. N. RaoLead author of the 2009 entropy paper

Ralph HimmelsbachFBI lead agent 1971 to 1980; author of NORJAK

Hijacking of Northwest 305 (D. B. Cooper)

Ramesses IIIPharaoh of Egypt's 20th Dynasty; recorded the Sea Peoples battles at Medinet Habu · -121–-115

Late Bronze Age collapse

Ran HonglinArchaeologist, Sichuan Provincial Institute of Cultural Relics and Archaeology; first author of the 2025 report on the new pits

Sanxingdui and its sacrificial pits

Raoul Gregory VitaleSyrian physicist and musicologist from Latakia who argued in 1982 that the Babylonian scale and the h.6 notation run downward. · 1928–2003

Hurrian songs of Ugarit

Raymond N. RogersSTURP chemist; proposed the repair hypothesis

Shroud of Turin

Rene DahindenInvestigator; last known to have the camera original

Patterson-Gimlin film

René DussaudLouvre curator of Near Eastern antiquities and Semitic epigrapher, editor of the Ahiram sarcophagus inscription, who argued in 1927 that the

Reviel NetzHistorian of mathematics; transcriber and editor · born 1968

Archimedes Palimpsest

Rex E. WallaceLinguist, University of Massachusetts Amherst; author of Zikh Rasna and editor of the Etruscan Texts Project

Etruscan: the readable language that cannot be fully translated

Richard B. FirestoneNuclear chemist, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory; first author of the 2007 paper · 1945–2024

Younger Dryas impact hypothesis

Richard BevinsGeologist, Aberystwyth University and National Museum Wales; bluestone and Altar Stone provenance

Richard ByrneJournalist and playwright; photographed the archive folders in 2025

Richard DumbrillArchaeomusicologist, co-founder of ICONEA, who reads the Babylonian system as nine-note and has published his own transcription of h.6. · bo

Hurrian songs of Ugarit

Richard E. GillespieExecutive director of TIGHAR

Disappearance of Amelia Earhart

Richard E. JoltesSource-critical historian of the legend

Oak Island money pit

Richard Floyd McCoy Jr.Hijacker of United 855 (1972); long-discussed Cooper suspect

Hijacking of Northwest 305 (D. B. Cooper)

Richard HananiaColumnist; argued in UnHerd that several people on the list were not scientists

America's missing scientists, 2021–2026

Richard JankoClassicist; Enkomi cylinder as an Eteocypriot account

Richard L. GarwinIBM physicist; Ruina panel member · 1928–2025

1979 Vela incident

Richard L. JantzForensic anthropologist, University of Tennessee

Disappearance of Amelia Earhart

Richard McCoy IIISon of Richard McCoy; holds the parachute rig

Hijacking of Northwest 305 (D. B. Cooper)

Richard PettigrewExecutive director, Archaeological Legacy Institute; director of the 2026 expedition

Disappearance of Amelia Earhart

Richard SproatComputational linguist; non-script argument and statistical critiques · born 1960

Richard SproatComputational linguist; critic of entropy-based writing claims · born 1960

Pictish symbol stones

Richard WetherillLed the Hyde Exploring Expedition at Pueblo Bonito

Great houses of Chaco Canyon

Ricky C. McCormickThe dead man; presumed writer of the notes

Ricky McCormick's notes

Rob IxerPetrographer, UCL; bluestone provenance

Rob LeeLead author of the 2010 entropy studies

Pictish symbol stones

Robert Adam SchneikerGeologist (ESCI, LLC); 2025 GSA poster

Great Sphinx of Giza

Robert BallardOceanographer; led the 2019 Nikumaroro expedition · born 1942

Disappearance of Amelia Earhart

Robert BigelowDeveloper; founder of NIDS and Bigelow Aerospace; owner 1996–2016 · 1908–1978

Skinwalker Ranch

Robert BlairHistorian of the legend's origins

Lost Dutchman's gold mine

Robert D. BiggsOriental Institute Assyriologist who published the Abu Salabikh tablets and the archaic Kesh Temple Hymn. · born 1934

Unread cuneiform: half a million tablets and the limits of Sumerian

Robert H. GrayIndependent astronomer; led most follow-up searches · born 1948

Robert H. RinesLed the Academy of Applied Science expeditions of the 1970s

Robert K. EnglundAssyriologist at UCLA, founding director of the Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative and editor of the archaic Uruk texts. · 1952–2020

Unread cuneiform: half a million tablets and the limits of Sumerian

Robert K. EnglundAssyriologist; editor of most of the proto-cuneiform corpus and founder of CDLI; held the language unknown · 1952–2020

Proto-cuneiform: the archaic texts of Uruk

Robert M. SchochGeologist; author of the rain-erosion redating · born 1949

Great Sphinx of Giza

Robert MorrissLynchburg innkeeper; a real person, keeper of the Washington Hotel from 1823

Robert P. DziakPMEL acoustics scientist; led the iceberg A53a study

Bloop and NOAA's unexplained ocean sounds

Robert Reed EllisonCowhand; the 1883 sighting is attributed to him by his family, not by his 1937 memoir

Robert RestallSearcher 1959 to 1965; died on the island

Oak Island money pit

Robert S. DixonDirector of the Ohio SETI programme

Robert S. P. BeekesIndo-Europeanist, Leiden; argued the Anatolian origin of the Etruscans (2003) · 1937–2017

Etruscan: the readable language that cannot be fully translated

Robert S. WeinerArchaeologist; Chaco roads and lidar

Great houses of Chaco Canyon

Robert ShippeeLeader of the Shippee-Johnson aerial expedition to Peru

Monte Sierpe, the "Band of Holes"

Robert TempleAuthor of the Anubis reading

Great Sphinx of Giza

Robert VernetPrehistorian of the western Sahara; recorded the Akerdil pebble tools and the Adrar rock art

Eye of the Sahara and Atlantis

Robert WerykUniversity of Hawaii astronomer who first identified the object in Pan-STARRS1 data · born 1981

Roeland DecorteAegean epigraphist; seals as integrated script, the Archanes script

Cretan Hieroglyphic

Roger L. Easton Jr.Imaging scientist, Rochester Institute of Technology

Archimedes Palimpsest

Roger M. RameyBrigadier General, Eighth Air Force

Roger PattersonFilmed the subject

Patterson-Gimlin film

Rolf M. SinclairPhysicist; co-author of the Sun Dagger solar and lunar papers

Great houses of Chaco Canyon

Ross CoulthartNewsNation journalist; linked McCasland and Monica Reza on air in March 2026

America's missing scientists, 2021–2026

Ross SamsonProposed the personal-names reading

Pictish symbol stones

Rupert GebhardArchaeologist; co-author of the Iron Age critique

Ryan GravesFormer Navy pilot; Americans for Safe Aerospace

US government UAP disclosures

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