Written in the Whorls

In 1892, Francis Galton published his landmark study Finger Prints, mathematically demonstrating that no two people on earth share the same fingerprint pattern. The odds of an identical match, he calculated, are roughly 1 in 64 billion — a number greater than every human being who has ever lived. What makes this even more remarkable is that your fingerprints take shape in the womb between weeks ten and sixteen, formed not just by your genes but by the unique micro-pressures of amniotic fluid pressing against your developing skin.…