Arthur Kollmann

Arthur Kollmann was a German medical researcher from Hamburg, who lived from 1858 to 1941 and studied the fingerprint characteristics of friction ridges and volar pads. In the 1880s, in 1883 and 1885, he was the first researcher to address how friction ridges form on the fetus and how random physical stresses and tensions in fetal growth may play a part, and he may have been the first to study the development of friction ridges at all. He grouped the volar pads of humans and of many primates, is credited with establishing and naming ten volar pads in humans, and was the first to study epidermic markings in different races. Alfred R. Hale described Kollmann as the first researcher, in 1883, to suggest that mechanical stresses inherent in fetal growth may influence the ultimate dermatoglyphic configuration. He is buried in the Nordfriedhof in Leipzig.