Henry Faulds

Born in North Ayrshire in 1843, Henry Faulds studied medicine at Anderson’s Institution in Glasgow before becoming a medical missionary with the Church of Scotland. In 1874 he went to Japan, where he helped establish a hospital and teaching facility and took part in a remarkably wide range of medical and social projects.

Faulds is remembered most for his work on fingerprints. While in Japan, he became interested in the ridge patterns left on ancient clay and began exploring whether fingerprints could be used to identify individuals. He later described the idea in Nature, and his observations helped lay the groundwork for fingerprint identification as a practical forensic tool.

He died in 1930, but his reputation has steadily grown as historians and forensic scientists have looked more closely at his contribution. Today he is often recognized as an important, and for many years underappreciated, figure in the origins of modern forensic science.