Major Developments in Forensic Science History

Chinese used fingerprints to establish identity of documents and clay sculptures

Dec 31, 700

700s AD

King Richard of England introduced the idea of the coroner to investigate questionable death

Dec 31, 1149

Fidelus was first to practice forensic medicine in Italy1670—Anton Van Leeuwenhoek constructed the first high-powered microscope

Dec 31, 1598

Gustav Kirchhoff and Robert Bunsen developed the science of spectroscopy.

Dec 31, 1859

Crime scene photography developed

Dec 31, 1864

Alphonse Bertillon developed a system to identify people using particular body measurements

Dec 31, 1879

Alphonse Bertillon Alphonse Bertillon (1853–1914), the son of medical professor Louis Bertillon, was a French criminologist and anthropologist who created the first system of physical measurements, photography, and record-keeping that police could use to identify recidivist criminals.

Edward Henry developed first classification system for fingerprint identification

Dec 31, 1896

Edward Henry Sir Edward Richard Henry, a British official stationed in India, began to develop a system of fingerprint identification for Indian criminals. (Henry created 1,024 primary fingerprint classifications.) In Argentina, Juan Vucetich, a police official, also used Galton's findings to create a fingerprint system.

Edmond Locard formulated his famous principle, “Every contact leaves a trace.”

Dec 31, 1904

James Watson and Francis Crick discover the DNA double helix

Dec 31, 1959

DNA double helix

AFIS developed by FBI, fully automated in 1996

Dec 31, 1977

Jeffreys developed and used first DNA tests to be applied to a criminal case

Dec 31, 1984

Alec Jefferys use of genetic tests in forensics goes back a century to the discovery of blood typing. But it wasn’t until the development of the first DNA fingerprinting techniques by Alec Jeffreys in 1984