ENCYCLOPEDIA BRITANNICA:

 Early anatomists described the ridges of the fingers, but interest in modern fingerprint identification dates from 1880, when the British scientific journal Nature published letters by the Englishmen Henry Faulds and William James Herschel describing the uniqueness and permanence of fingerprints. Their observations were experimentally verified by the English scientist Sir Francis Galton, who suggested the first elementary system for classifying fingerprints based on grouping the patterns into arches, loops, and whorls. Galton’s system served as the basis for the fingerprints classification systems developed by Sir Edward R. Henry, who later became chief commissioner of the London metropolitan police.

ENCYCLOPEDIA BRITANNICA: 

Fingerprints afford an infallible means of personal identification, because the ridge arrangement on every finger of every human being is unique and does not alter with growth or age. Fingerprints serve to reveal an individual’s true identity despite personal denial, assumed names, or changes in personal appearance resulting from age, disease, plastic surgery or accident.