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Forensic Science History

By herobigs
  • Quintillian (1000 B.C.)
    Oct 11, 1000

    Quintillian (1000 B.C.)

    A Roman attorney who proved in court that a bloody handprint was used to frame a blind man for his mother's death.
  • Mathieu Orfila (1787-1853)

    Mathieu Orfila (1787-1853)

    • Father of Forensic Science
    • Professor in Paris
    • Becomes famous for his work on posioning cases
    Wrote a book called 'Treatise of General Toxicology' in 1813 based off the work of previous scientists.
  • Sir William Herschal (1833-1918)

    Sir William Herschal (1833-1918)

    In 1877, he used thumbprints as identification during his work in the Indian civil service. He used thumbprints to verify idnetify in addition to signatures in court cases.
  • Alphonse Bertillion (1853-1914)

    Alphonse Bertillion (1853-1914)

    • Father of Criminal Identification
    • System wasn't very practical
    • Starting point to fingerprinting
    In 1879, he developed a system of identification called "anthropometry". The system required taking a series of body measurements which were then used later to identify a criminal.
  • Sir Edward Henry (1850-1931)

    Sir Edward Henry (1850-1931)

    • Englishman who began his career in India
    • Studied Galton's work and applied it to identify Indian prisoners
    • Expanded classification system to add two more finger print features: the arch, and the tented loop
    His success allowed him to be promoted to Scotland Yard in England. He wrote 'The Classification System' and 'Uses of Fingerprints' in 1889. The Henry Classification system is still used today.
  • Francis Galton (1822-1911)

    Francis Galton (1822-1911)

    • Published his work in a book called 'Finger Prints' in 1892
    • Cousin of Charles Darwin
    • Created a basic classification system based on three feautures: arches, whorls and loops
    Established that fingerprints weren't inherited and that every individual has a unique fingerprint using statistics.
  • Juan Vucetich (1858-1925)

    Juan Vucetich (1858-1925)

    • An Argentinean police researcher who studied the work of Galton
    • Took fingerprints and body measures of all criminals
    The supervisors were not convinced until Vucetich implicated a mother, Francesca Rojas in the murder of her own children with a bloody fingerprint in 1892. After this success, Vucetich finally convinced Argentina to adopt fingerprinting. This replaced anthropometry.
  • Hans Gross (1847-1915)

    Hans Gross (1847-1915)

    • Austrian judge
    • Advocate of the use of scientific method in criminal investigation
    He wrote the first book describing the application of science to criminal investigation in 1893 entitled 'Criminal Investigation'.
  • Karl Landsteiner (1868-1943)

    Karl Landsteiner (1868-1943)

    He was rewarded the Noble prize for his discovery of human blood types in 1900.
  • Edmond Locard (1877-1966)

    Edmond Locard (1877-1966)

    • French doctor and lawyer who applied Gross' theories in a crime lab
    He founded the first crime lab in Lyons in 1910. He influenced other countries in Europe to create crime labs because of his successes. He's most well known for Locard's Principle. Locard's Exchange Principle:
    - "Every contact leaves a trace"
    - During any crime that involves physical contact, the perpetrator either leaves something at the crime or takes something away, often both.

  • Leone Lattes (1887-1954)

    • Published the first book on clinical topics and the law
    Developed a technique to determine the 'type' of a dried blood stain using antibodies.
  • August Vollmer (1876-1955)

    August Vollmer (1876-1955)

    • First police chief of Berkeley, California.
    Known as the 'Father of Law Enforcement'.
  • Calvin Goddard (1891-1955)

    Calvin Goddard (1891-1955)

    • An United States Army colonel
    In 1920, he used the comparison microscope to determine if a particular gun had shot a specific bullet. He's famous as an expert witness in the Sacco Vanzetti trial in 1926 and the Valentine's Day Massacre.
  • Saint Valentine's Day Massacre

    Saint Valentine's Day Massacre

    The Saint Valentine's Day Massacre is the name of the 1929 murder of six mob associates and a mechanic of the North Side Irish gang led by Bugs Moran. The men were caught by police investigation and raid of Burke's bungalow, finding firearms used in the massacre,

  • Scientific Crime Detection Lab

    Founded at Northwestern University in 1929. Work by Goddard on the St. Valentine's day massacre led to the creation of this crime lab.
  • Paul Kirk (1902-1970)

    Paul Kirk (1902-1970)

    He was a chemist, forensic scientist and participant in the Manhattan Project who was specialized in microscopy. In 1929 Kirk became professor of biochemistry at UC Berkeley.

  • FBI

    Created by J. Edgar Hoover in 1932.

  • Berkeley School of Criminology

    • First to have a major in criminology
    • Paul Kirk published Crime Investigation the first textbook encompassing both the scientific theory and the pracitce of criminalistics
    Established by August Vollmer, the Chief of Police of Los Angeles and Paul Kirk in 1948.
  • Walter C. Mc Crone (1916-2002)

    Walter C. Mc Crone (1916-2002)

    • Analytical Chemist
    • Applied microscopy to forensic science
    He founded the McCrone Research Institute in Chicago in 1960. The institute is not for profit. He's also famous for his work on the Shroud of Turin.
  • Wayne Williams (1958)

    Wayne Williams (1958)

    He was an American man who was tried, convicted, and sentenced to life imprisonment in 1982 for killing two men. He was later tried on anuary 6, 1982 in Fulton County and the evidence used against him was trace fiber evidence.
  • Richard Ramirez "Night Stalker" (1960-2013)

    Richard Ramirez "Night Stalker" (1960-2013)

    Ricardo Leyva Muñoz Ramírez was an American serial killer, rapist, and burglar. He felt no remorse for his crimes, and terrorized residents in California. He was convicted of 13 counts of murder, 5 attempted murders, 11 sexual assaults and 14 burglaries. He was linked to a murder of a 79-year old woman in 1984 by his fingerprint.

  • CSI

    TV Crime show that permiered on October 6, 2000. The show sparked a hudge interest in forensic science. Forensic tests and examination "demanded" by juries.

  • National Academy of Science Report

    • A report published by the National Academy of Science in 2006
    The report cited mistakes and expressed concerns about the lack of scientific rigor in several forensic science discipline. Recent attempts to use report to exclude some forensic evidence in court.

  • Senate Judiciary Committee Hearings

    Hearing by the Senate judiciary committee regarding reform and regulation of Forensic Science.
    Heard testimony from Project Innocence and John Grisham in July of 2012.
  • Theodore Bundy (1946-1989)

    Theodore Bundy (1946-1989)

    Theodore Bundy was an American serial killer kidnapper, rapist, and necrophile who assaulted and murdered young women and girls during the 1970s and possibly earlier. He was later caught in 1975 and was sentenced to death by electrocution for a third time due to being caught by his teeth (biting of one of his victim's buttocks), this became the first odontology case at the time.

  • Dennis Rader "BTK Killer" (1945)

    Dennis Rader is an American serial killer who murdered ten people between 1974 and 1991. His signature is known as "BTK" which is short for "Blind, Torture, Kill". He was caught due to physchological profiling by a floppy disk and by using his "BTK" disguise in third person, cops later caught him and tried him life in prison.. Because his 175 year prison sentence was over the maximum penalty allowed by law.