Alphonse Bertillon (22 April 1853-13 February 1914) was a French policeman who served as head of the Judicial Identity Service at the time of the Dreyfus affair. Bertillon famously invented the mug shot and the "Bertillon system" of biometrics.
Biography[]
Alphonse Bertillon was born in Paris, France on 22 April 1853, and he was conscripted into the French Army in 1875 before working as a low-level clerk at the Prefecture of Police in Paris. He became a department copyist in 1879, and, alarmed by the rising rates of recidivism among France's criminals, Bertillon pioneered the fields of biometrics and forensics, including the preservation of footprints, the use of head length, head breadth, length of middle finger, length of the left foot, and length of the cubit in criminal records, and, most importantly, the invention of "mug shots" to identify repeat offenders. In 1894 and 1899, during the Dreyfus affair, Bertillon was used as a witness by the prosecution, testifying as a handwriting expert and claiming that Alfred Dreyfus was the author of a treasonous note which indicated that he was a spy for the German Empire. Bertillon came up with a long list of absurdities which failed to serve as proof, but it was not until 1906 that the evidence against Dreyfus was debunked. Bertillon died in Paris in 1914 at the age of 60.