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| Edmond Locard (public domain, Wikipedia) |
Dr. Edmond Locard is credited with observing and stating a principle which is now acknowledged as one of the foundation stones of forensic science - Locard's Exchange Principle. This principle states that whenever two objects come into contact, a transfer of material takes place. Another way of stating this is that when two objects come into contact with one another, each object will take with it something from the other object. At some point this principle became known by the phrase, "every contact leaves a trace", which is now known by the simpler and popular term, "trace evidence".
Traces of Greatness
Edmond Locard was born on December 13, 1877 in Saint-Chamond, Loire, France, which is located approximately 30 miles southwest of the city of Lyon. He studied medicine and law in Lyon and obtained his doctoral degree in medicine in the year 1902. As if to foreshadow his interest in a career in forensic science, his doctoral thesis was entitled "La médecine légale sous le Grand Roy" (Legal Medicine under the Great King).
After obtaining his degree he became the medical assistant to Alexandre Lacassagne at the University of Lyon. Lacassagne, who became Locard's mentor, has often been referred to as the father of forensic medicine.
Locard next decided to study law and successfully passed his bar examination in 1907.
Not one to sit idle, Dr. Locard left Lyon in 1908 to begin two years of international travel, beginning with a stop in Paris, where he met and studied with the famous Alphonse Bertillon, who taught him the anthropometric system of personal identification, also known as Bertillonage. Locard then moved on to visit police departments across Europe in Berlin, Rome and Vienna. After travelling to the United States and visiting the police departments of Chicago and New York, he began his homeward journey back to Lyon in the year 1910, after one last trip, this time visiting Swiss criminalist Rodolphe Archibald Reiss in Lausanne, Switzerland.
When he finally arrived home to Lyon, he discovered the city was experiencing something of a crime wave, with a noticeably higher murder rate than in years past. Sensing an opportunity to be of service, Dr. Locard approached the police department with a request to establish a laboratory for collecting and examining evidence from crime scenes. They agreed to do this and provided him with space in the courthouse attic in which to set up his equipment and office. By 1912, Locard's laboratory was officially recognized by the Technical Police for the Prefecture of the Rhone and it became the very first crime lab in known history. The lab itself gained worldwide recognition within the world of law enforcement and many great criminalists of the day gained priceless knowledge and experience there under the guidance of Dr. Locard.
If Dr. Locard was not in his laboratory, he could often be found in court, utilizing his knowledge and experience to help law enforcement and the courts.
Emile Gourbin
Gourbin, employed as a bank clerk in Lyon, was accused of the murder of a woman with whom he was romantically linked. Gourbin, it appeared, had a solid alibi for his whereabouts at the time the crime had been committed. After Dr. Locard had been given the opportunity to examine the body of the dead woman, he concluded that she had been strangled to death. During the examination, he took scrapings from underneath the fingernails of Gourbin, which contained traces of skin, which, Locard reasoned, might have come from the victim's throat as she was being strangled. What was more consequential however, was the pinkish powdery substance found to be coating the traces of the victim's skin in the sample of fingernail scrapings. This powder, it turned out, was an exact match for the face and neck powder worn by Gourbin's ladyfriend at the time of the attack which resulted in her death. Upon being confronted with this evidence, Gourbin made a full confession and was subsequently convicted of murder.
Popular Fame
In popular culture, Dr. Locard became known to many as the "Sherlock Holmes of France", as he was methodical, patient and able to deduce a myriad of important information from seemingly miniscule pieces of evidence.
A Legacy of Service
Dr. Locard went on to found the International Academy of Criminilistics in 1929 in Laussanne, Switzerland with four other criminalists - Swiss criminalist Marc Bischoff, Austrian criminalist Siegfried Trkel, Dutch criminalist C.J. van Ledden Hülsebosch, and German criminalist Georg Popp.
Poroscopy
Dr. Locard had a keen interest in the the science of dactylography, going so far as to offer his own research - which he termed "poroscopy" - as an improvement of that field of study. Dr. Locard discovered that, located in between the curved ridges which make up a person's unique finger and palm print, there are microscopic sweat pores which do not change in number or placement throughout a persons lifetime. The impressions these pores leave offer one more way that fingerprints can successfully identify a person.
Dr. Edmond Locard, a founding pioneer in the science of forensics, died in 1966, aged 88, in Lyon, France.
REFERENCES
BOOKS
Lane, Brian - The Encyclopedia of Forensic Science - 1992, Headline Book Publishing Plc.
Yount, Lisa - Forensic Science : from fibers to fingerprints - Chelsea House (New York)
ONLINE
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