Juan Vucetich was a Croatia

Croatia

Croatia , officially the Republic of Croatia , is a unitary democratic parliamentary republic in Europe at the crossroads of the Mitteleuropa, the Balkans, and the Mediterranean. Its capital and largest city is Zagreb. The country is divided into 20 counties and the city of Zagreb. Croatia covers ...

n-born Argentine

Argentina

Argentina , officially the Argentine Republic , is the second largest country in South America by land area, after Brazil. It is constituted as a federation of 23 provinces and an autonomous city, Buenos Aires...

 anthropologist and police

Police

The police is a personification of the state designated to put in practice the enforced law, protect property and reduce civil disorder in civilian matters. Their powers include the legitimized use of force...

 official who pioneered the use of fingerprinting.

Biography

Vucetich was born as Ivan Vučetić at Hvar

Hvar

- Climate :The climate of Hvar is characterized by mild winters and warm summers. The yearly average air temperature is , 686 mm of precipitation fall on the town of Hvar on average every year and the town has a total of 2800 sunshine hours per year. For comparison Hvar has an average of 7.7...

 in the Dalmatian region of Croatia

Croatia

Croatia , officially the Republic of Croatia , is a unitary democratic parliamentary republic in Europe at the crossroads of the Mitteleuropa, the Balkans, and the Mediterranean. Its capital and largest city is Zagreb. The country is divided into 20 counties and the city of Zagreb. Croatia covers ...

 then part of the Habsburg Monarchy

Habsburg Monarchy

The Habsburg Monarchy covered the territories ruled by the junior Austrian branch of the House of Habsburg , and then by the successor House of Habsburg-Lorraine , between 1526 and 1867/1918. The Imperial capital was Vienna, except from 1583 to 1611, when it was moved to Prague...

. In 1882, he emigrated to Argentina.

In 1891 Vucetich began the first filing of fingerprints based on ideas of Francis Galton

Francis Galton

Sir Francis Galton /ˈfrɑːnsɪs ˈgɔːltn̩/ FRS , cousin of Douglas Strutt Galton, half-cousin of Charles Darwin, was an English Victorian polymath: anthropologist, eugenicist, tropical explorer, geographer, inventor, meteorologist, proto-geneticist, psychometrician, and statistician...

 which he expanded significantly. He became the director of the Center for Dactyloscopy in Buenos Aires

Buenos Aires

Buenos Aires is the capital and largest city of Argentina, and the second-largest metropolitan area in South America, after São Paulo. It is located on the western shore of the estuary of the Río de la Plata, on the southeastern coast of the South American continent...

. At the time, he included the Bertillon system

Alphonse Bertillon

Alphonse Bertillon was a French police officer and biometrics researcher who created anthropometry, an identification system based on physical measurements. Anthropometry was the first scientific system used by police to identify criminals. Before that time, criminals could only be identified...

 alongside the fingerprint files.
In 1892 Vucetich made the first positive identification of a criminal in a case where Francisca Rojas

Francisca Rojas

Francisca Rojas is believed to be the first criminal found guilty through fingerprint evidence in the world.On June 29, 1892, 27-year-old Rojas murdered her two children in Necochea, Buenos Aires Province, in Argentina. Her six-year-old son, Ponciano Carballo Rojas, and his four-year-old sister...

 had killed her two sons and then cut her throat, trying to put the blame on the outside attacker. A bloody print identified her as the killer.

Argentine 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 in Dolores, Buenos Aires

Dolores, Buenos Aires

Dolores is a town in Buenos Aires Province, Argentina. It is the head town of the Dolores Partido.The town settlement was officially founded by Ramón Lara on August 21, 1817.-2008 March train disaster:...

.

Legacy

In his honor, the La Plata

La Plata

La Plata is the capital city of the Province of Buenos Aires, Argentina, and of La Plata partido. According to the , the city proper has a population of 574,369 and its metropolitan area has 694,253 inhabitants....

 police academy has been named Escuela de Policia "Juan Vucetich" (Juan Vucetich Police Academy), and an eponymous museum was also founded. The police Center for Forensics Examinations (Centar za kriminalistička vještačenja "Ivan Vučetić") in Zagreb, Croatia is also named after him. The Croatian city of Pula

Pula

Pula is the largest city in Istria County, Croatia, situated at the southern tip of the Istria peninsula, with a population of 62,080 .Like the rest of the region, it is known for its mild climate, smooth sea, and unspoiled nature. The city has a long tradition of winemaking, fishing,...

 has a memorial marker to Vucetich, owing to his service there while in the Austro-Hungarian Navy

Austro-Hungarian Navy

The Austro-Hungarian Navy was the naval force of Austria-Hungary. Its official name in German was Kaiserliche und Königliche Kriegsmarine , abbreviated as k.u.k. Kriegsmarine....

.