Edmond Locard

Edmond Locard was a French criminologist who founded the first police crime laboratory and formulated the exchange principle: contact between objects transfers material.

Locard's exchange principle: The forensic principle that contact between people or objects transfers material between them. This principle is Locard’s best-known contribution and the basis of trace-evidence analysis.
Lyon Police Laboratory: The forensic laboratory established by Edmond Locard in Lyon, France, in 1910. Locard founded this institution as the first police crime laboratory.
Fingerprint: A pattern of ridges on a fingertip that can leave an impression on a surface. Fingerprints are contact traces that became a central tool in Locard’s laboratory practice.
Hans Gross: An Austrian jurist whose 1893 handbook helped establish criminalistics as a systematic discipline. Gross’s handbook influenced the investigative science Locard later developed in a police laboratory.
Forensic laboratory: A laboratory that analyzes evidence for criminal investigations and legal proceedings. Locard’s Lyon institution helped establish the police forensic laboratory as a model.
Forensic science: The application of scientific methods to questions arising in legal investigations and proceedings. Locard helped establish forensic science as a systematic police practice.
University of Lyon: A public research university in Lyon, France, founded in its modern form in 1896. Locard studied medicine there and developed the academic foundations of his forensic work.
Forensic serology: The examination of bodily fluids for investigative and legal purposes. Biological traces illustrate how contact can leave material linking people and places.
Alphonse Bertillon: A French police official who developed anthropometry as a system for identifying repeat offenders. Bertillon’s identification methods formed part of the forensic landscape Locard inherited.
Physical evidence: Tangible material that can be examined to investigate or prove facts in a legal matter. Locard’s methods helped shift investigations toward evidence that could be tested and compared.

Linked from 1 page

Alexandre LacassagneBroader topic: Locard extended Lyon’s forensic tradition into systematic police laboratory work.