# Max Frei **Max Frei-Sulzer** (1913-1983) was a Swiss criminalist and palynologist, founder of the scientific section of the Zürich cantonal police, who in the 1970s collected and analyzed pollen samples from the Shroud of Turin using adhesive-tape lifts. He identified pollen from dozens of plant species, a substantial fraction of which are native to the eastern Mediterranean, particularly Judea, Anatolia, and the area around Constantinople, supporting a provenance trail consistent with the [Mandylion](/codex/mandylion/) thesis (Jerusalem → Edessa → Constantinople → western Europe). ## Significance Frei's botanical analysis is one of the load-bearing planks in the historical-provenance case for the Shroud's pre-14th-century existence in the Levant. His work has been criticized on methodological grounds, adhesive-tape sampling is contamination-prone, and species-level identification from single pollen grains is contested, and his earlier non-Shroud work (most famously, his initial authentication of the later-discredited "Hitler diaries") has been used to undermine his credibility. Defenders of the Shroud note that Frei's pollen samples were independently re-examined and that the Judean species identifications survive the methodology critiques. ## See also - [Shroud of Turin](/codex/shroud-of-turin/), the artifact Frei sampled - [Mandylion](/codex/mandylion/), the proposed pre-14th-century provenance chain Frei's pollen data supports - [STURP](/codex/sturp/), adjacent 1970s direct-examination work