1950-

British Geneticist

Sir Alec John Jeffreys developed a ground-breaking new technique to identify different genetic patterns found in each individual person, except identical twins. He coined the term DNA fingerprinting, and his procedure revolutionized criminal investigations by enabling forensic scientists to identify suspects based on scant DNA evidence found in blood, tissue, and body fluids.

Jeffreys was born on January 9, 1950, in Oxford, England. When he was eight years old his father, Sidney Victor Jeffreys, a designer and engineer in the car industry, gave him a microscope and chemistry set. He became hooked on both biology and chemistry, and found the two subjects fit together in biochemistry. In 1975 Jeffreys received a Ph.D. in human genetics from the University of Oxford and went to Amsterdam to work on a project. While in Amsterdam, an interesting question occurred to him: If genes can...