Francis Galton Nate Talbot Liz Masterson

Contribution to Forensics  Galton was an English Scientist and a biometrician.  Biometricians study individual identification using different means of biological data  His major contribution to forensics is his anthropometric research which is a system for classifying fingerprints  He developed a reliable system of recording and identifying fingerprints  His system has been used since he wrote Fingerprints in 1892 and is still used today. He was actually 70 years old when he wrote Fingerprints.  Galton stated in his autobiography that his fingerprint system should hold 20,000 prints.  Stunningly, by 1964 the FBI 173 million sets of fingerprints.

How Galton came to discover the importance of fingerprints  In his later years, Galton became interested in fingerprinting as a tool to identify racial differences as well as links between families. He collected over 8,000 sets of prints and studied these day and night. Galton confirmed the work of Sir William James Herschel years before, who had proposed that no two fingerprints are identical, nor do they change over time. In 1892, he published Fingerprints, which displayed a classification technique that was later adapted by police forces as a method used to convict criminals.

Methods to classify fingerprints  Although Galton was not the first to propose the use of fingerprints for identification (Sir William Herschel introduced the idea and Dr. Henry Faulds suggested the fingerprints potential work in forensics) he was the first to place their study on a scientific basis and put in the hours to discover their use in criminal cases.  Galton brought attention to the specific types of fingerprint patterns and put the different types in 8 different categories including :  Plain arch, tented arch, simple loop, central pocket loop, double loop, lateral pocket loop, plain whorl, and accidental.

Awards Over the course of his career Galton received many major awards, a few including:  the Copley medal of the Royal Society (1910)  the highest award from the Royal Geographical Society in 1853  He was also elected a member of the prestigious Athenaeum Club in 1855 and made a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1860

Bibliography Gary E Pittman (2000). Who is Sir Francis Galton?. [ONLINE] Available at: wsletters/GINL9909/francis_galton.htm. [Last Accessed 4 Septmber 2012 ]. Galton, F. Narrative of an Explorer in Tropical South Africa. Edited by G. T. Bettany. London, England, Francis Galton: An Exploration in Intellectual Biography and History."