As chair of the Forensic Identification Standards Committee of the International Association for Identification, I would like to point out an error in your obituary of Joseph Murray regarding the fingerprinting of identical twins (Nature 493, 164; 2013).

Murray did ask for Richard and Ronald Herrick to be fingerprinted to determine whether they were identical before he transplanted a kidney from one to the other (J. E. Murray Surgery of the Soul; Watson, 2001). Yet the Boston police archives have no record of the fingerprint request or of its results (I. Truta and M. Sullivan, personal communication).

The twins' fingerprint classification codes were probably tested for similarity, although this would not indicate twinning because unrelated people often share the same classification code. I could find no evidence that “the twins' fingerprints were identical”, as the obituary states. Had they been, I am confident that forensic science would have taken notice in 1954.

Different people, including genetically indistinguishable twins, do not deposit identical fingerprints (see, for example, X. Tao et al. PLoS ONE 7, e35704; 2012).