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Born in 1877, Locard grew up in Lyon, France. He was ten years old when the first of Conan Doyle's detective tales, A Study in Scarlet, debuted. Once he read a French translation, he was hooked. Later in life he would urge fellow scientists to read and learn from these stories. He also studied Hans Gross's groundbreaking book on criminalistics.
As a young man, Locard obtained a doctoral degree in medicine at the University of Lyon, where he became a protégé of the famed medico-legal pathologist, Andre Lacassagne. Because Lacassagne received the victims of suicide, accident, and violent crime, this was quite an education. Locard learned about wound analysis, crime reconstruction, and the use of chemical reagents to identify substances like blood and semen. On his own he made a thorough study of dust lifted from unusual sources (Reportedly, he once correctly identified the occupations of 92 out of 100 people based on dust collected from their eyebrows).
To his list of growing credentials Locard added a law degree before studying under Alphonse Bertillon, who had developed the anthropomorphic system of measurements for criminal identification bertillonage). Locard then visited numerous police departments to learn how things were done, traveling as far away as New York and Chicago. He met many prominent criminalists, which only fed his passion for the emerging field of forensic science. However, he was disappointed at the lack of progress beyond new fingerprinting methods. He aspired to achieve for criminal investigation what Lacassagne had done for forensic pathology, so in 1 9 1 0 he returned to Lyon to set up his own shop.
THE WORLD'S FIRST CRIME LAB
Locard hoped to interest the local police in establishing a crime laboratory. He tried to persuade them of its value, but despite the high incidence of violent crimes in the area, no one shared his vision. Undaunted, Locard called in favors and acquired two dingy attic rooms on the third floor of the Palais de Justice. With his own money, he purchased a microscope, reference books, chemicals, a Bunsen burner, and a spectroscope. Then he awaited a case. It didn't take long.
Counterfeit coins were being used to purchase goods around the area, and the police thought they knew the culprits' identities,...