Julius Grant (forensic scientist)

Julius Grant (born October 19, 1901 , London , England - † July 5, 1991 ) was a British forensic scientist .

Julius Grant grew up in London and worked in a drugstore laboratory while attending night school. He studied chemistry and received a doctorate in chemistry. In 1931 he began working in the laboratory of the John Dickinson paper mill in Croxley Mills. During this time he was also busy examining the paper on the mummy of Tutankhamun . During World War II , he developed edible paper for secret agents and paper for prisoners of war that prevented them from taking extra secret notes, as well as secret ink. He developed a method to make food rationing books forgery-proof by dusting the paper with tiny sections of red-dyed hair from cow's tails.

In 1948 he took over the management of the chemical analysis company Hehner & Cox . Grant has acted as an appraiser in numerous police investigations and court hearings. One of the crimes in which he was brought in was the mail train robbery in 1963 and he was also involved in the investigation of the failed assassination attempt on Archbishop Makarios in 1974. In 1974 he was an expert witness for both the defense and the prosecution in a very rare case in the murder trial of George Ince. His expert opinion, however, led to a supposedly irrefutable charge being dropped as he was able to prove that rare fibers were not only found at the scene of the murder, but also in the apartment of Ince's uninvolved sister. Grant also acted as an expert witness in the trial of John Demjanjuk in Jerusalem.

In 1967, Grant unmasked the diaries of Benito Mussolini presented by two women as a forgery within a few minutes, which had previously been declared to be genuine by various people, including Mussolini's son. In an exercise book dated 1925, Grant discovered a type of paper that he himself had seen introduced into the paper industry in the 1930s. In May 1983, the Sunday Times submitted two volumes of the alleged diaries of Adolf Hitler for investigation. Within five hours, Grant was able to prove that the books had been written on recycled paper that had been treated with a lightening chemical that was only available after World War II.

Grant was President of the Royal Forensic Society and the Medical-Legal Society . He published 28 books.

Grant was married twice and had two children from his first marriage. For over 30 years he lived on the Thames island Friday Island .

Publications (selection)

• Science for the Prosecution , Chapman & Hall, London, 1st edition 1941
• with Inigo WD Hackh, Hackh's chemical dictionary , J. & A. Churchill, London, 2nd edition 1938

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Dr Julius Grant obituary, in: The Daily Telegraph , July 8, 1991, accessed October 30, 2015
2. ^ Died - Julius Grant in: Der Spiegel , July 15, 1991, accessed October 30, 2015