Hvar born Ivan Vučetić, the one who discovered that a fingerprint is unique and unrepeatable, is receiving honor with an artistic monument in his hometown.
Ivan Vučetić was born on Hvar on July 28, 1858, and like many other Dalmatians at the time, emigrated to South America. Vučetić ultimately settled in Argentina where there was a significant Hvar community. He changed his name to Juan Vucetich as a way to become culturally recognizable, and began working for the Central Police Bureau in La Plata some years later.
Vučetić created the first method of recording the fingerprints of individuals on file, associating these fingerprints to the anthropometric system of Alphonse Bertillon, who had created a system to identify individuals by anthropometric photographs and associated quantitative descriptions in 1879. In 1892 Vučetić made the first positive identification of a criminal in a case where Francisca Rojas had killed her two children and then cut her throat, trying to put the blame on an outside attacker. A bloody print identified her as the killer.
Argentine police adopted Vučetić’s method of fingerprinting classification and it spread to police forces worldwide. Vučetić improved his method, and in 1904, published Dactiloscopía Comparada (“Comparative Dactyloscopy”). Vučetić later died in Dolores, Argentina in 1925.
Thus, in the center of Hvar town, after more than a century since its discovery, the largest fingerprint in the world has been set up with a stone mosaic that is 12 square meters large. The mosaic was done by Hvar artist Tonka Alujević.
You can watch the video on HRT HERE.
