GALTON, Francis.

Inquire · Offered by Peter Harrington

Finger Prints. First edition of Galton's work designed to assist with classifying and indexing large numbers of fingerprints. "The use of fingerprints for the identification of criminals had been advocated in 'Nature' in 1880 by both Henry Faulds and Sir William Herschel, but was put on a scientific basis only in Galton's book on Finger Prints, published in 1892" (Bulmer, p. 35). Of particular importance was Galton's work on establishing that "the pattern of a person's fingerprints did not change from youth to old age and creating a taxonomic system by which the variations in fingerprint patterns could be described and catalogued" (ODNB). As a result, a Royal Commission was appointed in 1892 to propose that the British police forces adopt the system.This copy has the ownership signature of one Roger Wood on the front free endpaper, dated 1970, possibly the British biologist and academic Roger John Wood, who has published on Mendelian genetics and the cultural history of heredity.

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