2015/03/02

The Daily Beast February 26, 2015: The Godfather of CSI: How Forensics Changed Crime-Solving

Edmond Locard wasn’t just an artist, a lawyer, a violin virtuoso, a botanist, a linguist and medical doctor. He was also the founder of modern forensic science.

He persuaded the city of Lyons in southern France to establish the world’s first CSI laboratory—it would change the face of crime fighting for ever.

Like Sherlock Holmes, the fictional detective who inspired him, he was a genius.

Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, who had created Holmes in 1886, was among the admirers of Locard who thronged to see the forensic lab in operation.

“They had great mutual respect for each others’ work,” said Lucy Shanahan, curator of “Forensics: The Anatomy of Crime,” which opened in London on Thursday. The show, at the Wellcome Collection, finally restores Locard to the centre stage in a world still obsessed with the work of detectives.

Locard’s lab opened in 1910 and there he would go on to formulate the central theory of forensics that underpins thousands of murder investigations launched every year, from Baltimore to Cape Town.

His theory determined that “every contact leaves a trace.” He pointed to fingerprints, hair, blood and bodily fluids. The intervening decades have seen ever more fiendish techniques add smaller and more obscure clues to the list of potential traces that could link a killer to the scene of his crime. more