Editing Francis Galton (section)

===Fingerprints===
The method of identifying criminals by their fingerprints had been introduced in the 1860s by Sir [[William James Herschel]] in India, and their potential use in forensic work was first proposed by Dr [[Henry Faulds]] in 1880. Galton was introduced to the field by his half-cousin [[Charles Darwin]], who was a friend of Faulds, and he went on to create the first scientific footing for the study (which assisted its acceptance by the courts{{sfn|Bulmer|2003|p=35}}) although Galton did not ever give credit that the original idea was not his.<ref name="BBC" />

In a [[Royal Institution]] paper in 1888 and three books (''[[Finger Prints (book)|Finger Prints]]'', 1892; ''Decipherment of Blurred Finger Prints'', 1893; and ''Fingerprint Directories'', 1895),{{sfn|Conklin|Gardner|Shortelle|2002|p=}} Galton estimated the probability of two persons having the same [[fingerprint]] and studied the heritability and racial differences in fingerprints. He wrote about the technique (inadvertently sparking a controversy between Herschel and Faulds that was to last until 1917), identifying common pattern in fingerprints and devising a classification system that survives to this day. He described and classified them into eight broad categories: 1: plain arch, 2: tented arch, 3: simple loop, 4: central pocket loop, 5: double loop, 6: lateral pocket loop, 7: plain whorl, and 8: accidental.{{sfn|Innes|2005|pp=32–33}}

[[File:Karl Pearson; Sir Francis Galton.jpg|thumb|Francis Galton (right), aged 87, on the verandah at Fox Holm, Cobham, with the statistician [[Karl Pearson]]]]