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Juan Vucetich (1858-1925) was a Croatian-born Argentinean anthropologist and police official who pioneered the use of fingerprinting.
Vucetich was born Josip Vucetic on July 20, 1858 in Lessina, Croatia. 1882 he emigrated to Argentina.
In 1891 Vucetic begun the first filing of fingerprints based on ideas of Francis Galton which he expanded significantly. He became the director of the Center for Dactyloscopy in Buenos Aires. At the time, he included Bertillon system alongside the fingerprint files.
In 1892 Vucetich made the first positive identification of a criminal in a case of where a mother had killed her two sons and then cut her throat, trying to put the blame on the outside attacker. Bloody print identified her as the killer.
Argentinean police adopted Vucetich's method of fingerprinting classification and it spread to police forces all over the world. Vucetich improved his method with new material and in 1904 published
Dactiloscopía Comparada ("Comparative Dactyloscopy"). He traveled to India and China and attended scientific conferences to gather more data.
Juan Vucetich died on January 25 1925 in Dolores, Buenos Aires.
In the honor of Vucetic, La Plata police academy has been named "Escuela de policia Juan Vucetic".
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