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Dr. Nehemiah
The earliest record of the study of patterns on human hands was done by Dr. Nehemiah. He described the patterns he saw under a microscope and the presence of ridges. -
Johann Christoph Andreas Mayer
Mayer followed Dr. Nehemiah's work and was most likely the first scientist to realize the arrangement of ridges varied person to person. -
Jan Evangelist Purkyn
Described nine distinct fingerprint patterns. Some of these patterns included loops, double whorls, spirals, and circles. -
Sir William Hershel
Began collecting fingerprints and noted the unique patterns between people and how they were unaltered by age. -
Alphonse Bertillon
Bertillon was an assistant clerk at the records office in the Police Station in Paris and developed a way to identify criminals which involved physical measurements -
Sir Francis Galton
Galton verified prints do not change with age and with Henry they developed a classification for fingerprints that was added to the Bertillonage system. In the United States and Europe this system is still in use. -
Ivan Vucetich
Vucetich improved the fingerprint collection system by noting measurements on identification cards of all arrested persons, adding all 10 print impressions -
Sir Edmund Richard Henry
With the help of two colleagues, Henry developed a system that divided fingerprint records based on the pattern they have which included arches, whorls, or loops. The ten card included all 10 fingerprints with individual characteristics. -
Fingerprint Identification Tests
156 fingerprint examiners were tested with 1 in 5 examiners making at least one false-positive fingerprint identification. This called for a new system to match prints from a crime scene to the ones on file -
Integrated Automated Fingerprint Identification System
The IAFIS was developed by the FBI to provide automated fingerprint searches, latent searches, electronic storage of photo files, and exchange of fingerprints and test results
