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300
3rd Century Chinese
Chinese scientists and chemists started performing autopsies on pigs for the detection of smoke ingestion in their bodies. These discoveries eventually led to to them determining cause of death in humans at the time. This was the first known use of forensics to determine cause of death. -
Mathieu Joseph Bonadventure Orfila
Known as the Father of Toxicology after he founded the commonly used practice. Orfila was a Spanish chemist who established chemical analysis as a routine part of forensic medicine to help determine the presence of poisons or drugs in the body at time of death. -
Valentin Ross
Ross was a German chemist who expanded on the work and field findings of Carl Wilhelm Scheele. He worked with detecting the presence of toxins and chemicals in corpses and developed a new, easier way to do so. -
Alphonse Bertillion
Known as the "Father of Criminal Identification", Bertillon developed a method of identification which was widely used prior to the discovery of fingerprint identification. His system involved measuring certain body parts of individuals as he believed no two people who have all of the same body measurements. -
Hans Gross
Gross wrote the first paper describing the application of scientific principles to the field of criminal investigation. He also published Criminal Investigation and was known as the "Founding Father" of criminal profiling. -
Karl Landsteiner
Known for discovering the ABO blood groups, a classification system for blood still used today. He later received a Nobel Prize for his contributions to the field of forensics. -
Juan Vucetich
Vucetich, who started as an Argentinian police official, devised the first usable system of fingerprint identification called "dactyloscopy" and pioneered the use of fingerprint evidence in a murder investigation. -
Dr. Edmond Locard
Known as the "Sherlock Holmes of France", Locard incorporated Gross' principles within a workable crime lab. He became the founder and director of the Institute of Criminalistics at the University of Lyons, France. -
Henry Goddard
Goddard was a prominent psychologist in early America and was known for his studies of heredity and mental illness. He can also be accredited with bringing the Binet intelligence test to the US. -
August Vollmer
Vollmer is known for establishing the first, working crime lab in the United States, located in Los Angeles, California. He is described as the "Father of Modern Policing". -
J. Edgar Hoover
Hoover was an American law enforcement administrator and he served as the first director of the FBI in the United States -
CODIS
This system was organized and maintained by the FBI and is a generic term to describe the FBI's support for criminal justice DNA databases and the software used to run them. CODIS stands for Combined DNA Index System. -
Sir Alec Jeffreys
Jeffreys is a British geneticist who is known for developing techniques for genetic fingerprinting and DNA profiling which are now widely used in the field of forensics. He was awarded a Copley medal for his contributions. -
AFIS and IAFIS
AFIS is a database created primarily to identify and collect fingerprints using digital imaging to compare tem. IAFIS or Integrated Automated Fingerprint Identification System, was created later by the FBI to serve as the national database used to identify and collect prints. -
Daubert Ruling
The Daubert standard is a rule of evidence regarding the admissibility of of expert witness testimony. This governs "expert evidence" and testimony in court to ensure that it is relevant and reliable