Forensic Science Timeline

Juan VUCETICH, an Argentine Police Official, makes the first criminal fingerprint identification. He devised a usable system of fingerprint identification, which he termed dactyloscopy.

Francisca Rojas becomes the first person charged with a crime on fingerprint evidence in Argentina. Juan VUCETICH identified Rojas, who had murdered her two sons and cut her own throat in an attempt to place blame on another. Her bloody print was left on a door post, proving her identity as the murderer. 

Argentina is the first country to replace anthropometry with fingerprints.

Hans Gross (1847-1915), examining magistrate and professor of criminal law at the University of Graz, Austria, published Criminal Investigation, the first comprehensive description of the uses of physical evidence in solving crime. Gross also coined the term criminalistics.

Sir Francis Galton (1822-1911), a nephew of Charles Darwin, published his classic textbook “Fingerprints,” the first comprehensive book on the nature of fingerprints and their use in solving crime.

GALTON identifies the characteristics by which fingerprints can be identified (minutia), basically still in use today and often referred to as GALTON´s Details.

Alfred Dreyfus of France was convicted of treason based on a mistaken handwriting identification by Bertillon.

• Dr. Eduard Piotrowski publishes his text on bloodstain pattern recognition.
• Wilhelm Konrad Röntgen (1845–1923) becomes the first person to observe X-rays, a significant scientific advancement that would ultimately benefit a variety of fields, most of all medicine, by making the invisible visible.

Sir Edward Richard Henry (1850-1931) developed the prototype fingerprint classification system that is the basis for those used in Europe and the United States. He published Classification and Uses of Finger Prints.

Herman Welcker (1822–1899) shows his own fingerprints taken in 1897 matched those taken in 1856, thus supporting the findings of William Herschel.

Paul Brouardel (1837–1906) lays out the autopsy findings in victims of strangulation in his book La Pendaison, la strangulation, la suffocation, la submersion.

Paul Jeserich (1854–1927), a chemist working in Berlin, Germany, uses a microscope for ballistic comparison. Paul Jesrich took photomicrographs of two bullets to compare and subsequently individualize the minutiae.

1898: Hans Gross publishes Criminal Psychology.

Sir Edward Richard Henry (1850-1931) deviced a 10 digit fingerprint classification system.