Forensic science grew out of separate breakthroughs in fingerprinting, trace evidence, and genetics, each verified decades apart. This page covers four milestones with dates that can be checked against a source.
This history focuses on European and North American developments, since that is where these particular records survive and where the methods described below were first published and adopted. It is not a complete world history of legal investigation.
When was fingerprint classification developed?
Francis Galton published Finger Prints in 1892, the book that gave fingerprint identification its first workable scientific classification system and a statistical case for the uniqueness of individual prints (Galton.org fingerprint archive). Edward Henry adapted Galton’s work into a system published in June 1900 and put into official use at Scotland Yard in 1901 (Britannica). This entry covers the classification system’s origin only. It does not track every police department’s own date of adoption, which varied by country and by decade.
What is Locard’s exchange principle?
Edmond Locard founded the first police crime laboratory in Lyon, France, in 1910 (Britannica). He is credited with the idea now called the exchange principle: that contact between a person and a crime scene leaves trace evidence in both directions. This entry is about the founding of the lab and the principle associated with Locard’s name. It is not a claim that Locard invented trace-evidence analysis outright, since related techniques existed before him.
When was the first criminal case solved using DNA profiling?
British geneticist Alec Jeffreys devised DNA profiling for forensic identification in 1984. In 1986, police asked him to help identify a suspect in the rape and murder of two girls in Leicestershire, and the resulting DNA analysis led to the conviction of Colin Pitchfork, the first murder case solved using DNA evidence (U.S. National Library of Medicine). This entry covers the first documented use of DNA profiling to solve a criminal case. It says nothing about how DNA evidence is handled in courts today, which has changed since 1986. Learn about the current discipline in the branches of forensic science.
Why does the timeline stop where it does?
This page lists only milestones with a verifiable date from a source fetched for this article. Many other names and dates appear in popular histories of forensic science, but without a source checked for this page, they are left out rather than repeated unverified. For the disciplines that grew from this history, see forensic anthropology and the section hub at forensic science.
Sources
- Galton.org. Francis Galton: Fingerprinter
- Encyclopaedia Britannica. Henry system
- Encyclopaedia Britannica. Crime-scene investigation
- U.S. National Library of Medicine. Alec Jeffreys and the Pitchfork Murder Case: The Origins of DNA Profiling