forensic science

Use of scientific techniques to solve criminal cases. A multidisciplinary field embracing chemistry, physics, botany, zoology, and medicine, forensic science includes the identification of human bodies or traces. Ballistics (the study of projectiles, such as bullets), another traditional forensic field, makes use of such tools as the comparison microscope and the electron microscope.

Traditional methods such as fingerprinting are still used, assisted by computers; in addition, blood analysis, forensic dentistry, voice and speech spectrograms, and genetic fingerprinting are increasingly applied. Chemicals, such as poisons and drugs, are analysed by chromatography. ESDA (electrostatic document analysis) is a technique used for revealing indentations on paper, which helps determine if documents have been tampered with. Forensic entomology is also a branch of forensic science.

The first forensic laboratory may have been founded in Lyons, France, in 1910 by Edmond Locard, although it is claimed that Locard's teacher Alphonse Bertillon had established one earlier, and that the laboratory in Lyons was founded by Jean Lacassagne. The science developed as a systematic discipline in the 1930s. In 1932 the US Federal Bureau of Investigation established a forensic science laboratory in Washington, DC, and in the UK the first such laboratory was founded in London 1935.