Sir Alec Jeffreys (born 1950) is a British geneticist
whose development of "DNA fingerprinting"
transformed the identification of individuals and the
investigation of biological relationships. He studied
biochemistry at the University of Oxford, where he also
completed his doctorate, before joining the University of
Leicester in 1977. His research concerned genetic variation
and the evolution of genes. On 10 September 1984, while
examining highly variable repetitive DNA sequences
called minisatellites, he recognized that
patterns of DNA fragments could distinguish
individuals and reveal inherited similarities among close
relatives.
A lawyer who read about DNA
fingerprinting in the popular press asked Jeffreys to
assist in an immigration case in 1985. Jeffreys showed that a
British-resident woman attempting to bring her non-resident
son into the country was in fact his mother, rather than his
aunt as authorities had claimed. Its forensic potential
became clear in a subsequent investigation of two murders. DNA
evidence exonerated a man who had confessed to one of the
crimes, and helped identify the actual murderer. Jeffreys鈥�
work has been developed a reliable genetic evidence both fro
identification perpetrators and in protecting the innocent.
Beyond these applications, he made substantial contributions
to understanding human mutation, meiotic recombination, and
the origins of genetic diversity. He was elected a Fellow of
the Royal Society in 1986, knighted for services to genetics
in 1994,