Holmes, the original forensic scientist?

The science magazine Cosmos recently featured an article which asked the question "Was Sherlock Holmes the original forensic scientist?" Although the article isn't seriously making the claim, it does point out how Arthur Conan Doyle helped pave the way for the emerging science of forensics. As examples:

In one story, Holmes found a reagent precipitated by hemoglobin and nothing else, yet it would be 13 years before a real test for "the differential diagnosis of human blood" was used by a German medical researcher.

Edmund Locard, a French pioneer of forensic criminology, read Holmes stories.

In "A Case of Identity," Homes remarks to Watson: "It is a curious thing…that a typewriter has really as much individuality as a man's handwriting." Yet the story appeared three years before any document examiner wrote about typewriter identification (according to David Crown, who headed the CIA's Questioned Document Laboratory in Washington DC for 15 years).

Former University of London chemist John Emsley was quoted as saying, ""Doyle pointed the way to the future," noting that Doyle drew attention to advances in forensic science emerging in the late Victorian era. Emsley, by the way, is writing a book with the intriguing title of Molecules and Murder, to be published in late 2008 by Britain's Royal Society of Chemistry. That same society named Holmes – not Conan Doyle – as an honorary fellow for the pioneering use of forensics, in 2002.

Check out the Forensics links under "The List" section of this blog; in compiling them, I was truly amazed at the amazing depth of research and technology available in the world of forensics, and it's evolving daily.

Comments

[Terrie Moran]

BV,

You are so right, forensics has grown by leaps and bounds. Makes story telling more challenging and more fun.

Terrie