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Roman Quintilian
Quintilian was a Roman rhetorician and lawyer. He is most famous for his work, the Institutio oratoria, which dealt with a wide range of topics, from education to oratory. However, the most influential volumes were books 3 to 9, which focused specifically on forensic oratory. His works helped to lay the foundation for how modern lawyers argue in court and interpret forensic evidence.
Sources:
https://www.britannica.com/biography/Quintilian -
Jan 1, 1248
Hsi Duan Yu
The author of this novel helped show that insects can be used to help solve a murder! He or she is also one of the first people to use fingerprints in forensic cases. This novel is still read by many forensic scientists, as it provides the basis of entomology in forensics.
Sources:
http://www.forensicsciencetechnician.net/forensics-hall-of-fame-10-forensic-scientists-who-made-history/
http://www.cbsnews.com/htdocs/forensics/timeline.html -
John Evangelist Purkinje
John Purkinje was a Czech physiologist, who first observed that fingerprints had 9 specific patterns. Although he didn’t yet come to the conclusion that everyone had a unique fingerprint, he was the first physiologist to identify that fingerprints did have a specific pattern, allowing for later advances which made fingerprints useful in forensics and the identification of individuals.
Sources:
http://www.biography.com/people/johannes-purkinje-9448687
http://onin.com/fp/fphistory.html -
Bernard Spilsbury
Called a “Real Life Sherlock Holmes,” Bernard Spilsbury is considered to have made forensic pathology respectable. He was involved in many high-profile and high-publicity cases, such as in the 1910 disappearance of Cora Crippen. In all of these cases, he was able to use forensic skills during the autopsy and examination of bodies in order to determine the mode of death, and his methodology is studied today.
Sources:
http://www.headstuff.org/2014/08/sir-bernard-spilsbury-professional-expert/ -
Edmond Locard
During World War I, Locard was a medical examiner, working to identify the cause and location of a soldier’s death from the damages to their uniforms. Sometime after 1912, he determined a new way to identify an individual based on 12 specific points in their fingerprint. He would also coin the principle that any contact between two objects leaves some sort of trace, which is a basic premise forensic scientists and investigators use today.
Sources:
http://aboutforensics.co.uk/edmond-locard/ -
John Larson
Larson read about the effects of lying on a person’s heart rate and blood pressure; he would later hear about other effects related to one’s galvanic skin response, and how the conductivity of a person’s skin changes when they lie. He built what he called a “polygraph,” which could determine if someone was lying based upon these factors. In time, this would develop into the modern polygraph used by forensic scientists.
Source:
http://jimfisher.edinboro.edu/forensics/polywar1.html -
Bill Bass
Bill Bass is a forensic anthropologist, who is most famous for the “Body Farm.” The only laboratory of its type in the world at the time, this is a plot of land with various types of decaying bodies placed upon it. This is so that scientists can study how exactly bodies decompose, which is useful to forensic scientists, as they can determine how long ago somebody was killed based upon the state of the body’s decay.
Sources:
https://anthropology.as.uky.edu/alumni-spotlights/bill-bass -
Alec Jeffreys
Jeffreys was one of the first to use DNA in forensics. He tried to match DNA in families, and then discovered that it could be used to identify individuals. His techniques are used in forensics today, specifically in paternity. DNA matching is used to convict criminals. He has also helped to develop techniques for DNA fingerprinting.
Sources:
http://www.forensicsciencetechnician.net/forensics-hall-of-fame-10-forensic-scientists-who-made-history/
http://www2.le.ac.uk/departments/genetics/jeffreys -
Clea Koff
Koff was one of the first people to use anthropology in forensics. Her expertise was used in determining age, gender and cause of death by looking at a human skull. She primarily helped bring justice to victims of the Bosnian, Rwandan and Croatian genocides. -
Jan C. Garavaglia
Jan C. Garavaglia is the Chief Medical Examiner for Orange and Osceola Counties; she largely handles autospies, attempting to determine the cause of death, which falls under forensic pathology. She has been involved in high profile criminal cases, such as the trial of Casey Anthony. As well, she is a science popularizer, famous for her Discovery Channel show “Dr. G.”
Sources:
http://criminalbrief.com/?p=9846#anthony
http://abcnews.go.com/GMA/Books/story?id=6362140&page=1
