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Derek Abbott (born 3 May 1960) is a British-Australian physicist and electronic engineer. He was born in South Kensington, London, UK. From 1969 to 1971, he was a boarder at Copthorne Preparatory School, Sussex. From 1971 to 1978, he attended the Holland Park School London.

In late 1977, he began work at GEC Hirst Research Centre, Wembley, UK, performing research in the area of CCD and microchip design for imaging systems. Whilst working, he graduated in 1982 with a BSc in Physics from Loughborough University. In 1986, he began work as a microchip designer at Austek Microsystems in Adelaide, Australia. In 1987, he joined the University of Adelaide completing his PhD thesis in Electrical & Electronic Engineering in 1995, entitled GaAs MESFET Photodetectors for Imaging Arrays, under Kamran Eshraghian and Bruce R. Davis.

He became a fellow of the IEEE in 2005 "for contributions to analysis of noise and stochastic phenomena in vision systems". He received an Australian Laureate Fellowship in 2024, for ultrasensitive T-ray detection.

Somerton man case

In March 2009, a University of Adelaide team led by Abbott began an attempt to solve the Somerton Man case involving an unidentified man being found dead near Adelaide in 1948. This involves genetic analysis and proposing to exhume the body to test for DNA. His investigations have led to questions concerning the assumptions police had made on the case. Abbott also tracked down the Barbour waxed cotton of the period and found packaging variations. This may provide clues to the country where it was purchased.

The man was found with a scrap of paper and an apparently encrypted message: decryption was being started from scratch. It had been determined the letter frequency was considerably different from letters written down randomly; the frequency was to be further tested to determine if the alcohol level of the writer could alter random distribution. The format of the code also appeared to follow the quatrain format of the Rubaiyat, supporting the theory that the code was a one-time pad encryption algorithm. Copies of the Rubaiyat, as well as the Talmud and Bible, were being compared to the code using computers to get a statistical base for letter frequencies. However, the code's short length meant the investigators would require the exact edition of the book used. With the original copy lost in the 1960s, researchers have been looking for a FitzGerald edition without success.

An investigation had shown that the Somerton Man's autopsy reports of 1948 and 1949 are now missing and the Barr Smith Library's collection of Cleland's notes do not contain anything on the case. Maciej Henneberg, professor of anatomy at the University of Adelaide, examined images of the Somerton man's ears and found that his cymba (upper ear hollow) is larger than his cavum (lower ear hollow), a feature possessed by only 1–2% of the Caucasian population. In May 2009, Abbott consulted with dental experts who concluded that the Somerton Man had hypodontia (a rare genetic disorder) of both lateral incisors, a feature present in only 2% of the general population. In June 2010, Abbott obtained a photograph of Jessica Thomson's eldest son Robin, which clearly showed that he – like the unknown man – had not only a larger cymba than cavum but also hypodontia. The chance that this was a coincidence has been estimated as between one in 10,000,000 and one in 20,000,000.

The media have suggested that Robin Thomson, who was 16 months old in 1948 and died in 2009, may have been a child of either Alf Boxall or the Somerton Man and passed off as Prosper Thomson's son. DNA testing would confirm or eliminate this speculation. Abbott believes an exhumation and an autosomal DNA test could link the Somerton man to a shortlist of surnames which, along with existing clues to the man's identity, would be the "final piece of the puzzle". However, in October 2011, Attorney General John Rau refused permission to exhume the body, stating: "There needs to be public interest reasons that go well beyond public curiosity or broad scientific interest."

Feltus said he was still contacted by people in Europe who believed the man was a missing relative but did not believe an exhumation and finding the man's family grouping would provide answers to relatives, as "during that period so many war criminals changed their names and came to different countries".

In July 2013, Abbott released an artistic impression he commissioned of the Somerton man, believing this might finally lead to an identification. "All this time we've been publishing the autopsy photo, and it's hard to tell what something looks like from that", Abbott said.

After initially contacting her to seek her DNA, Abbott married Rachel, the daughter of Roma Egan and Robin Thomson, in 2010, and they have three children.

In December 2017, Abbott announced three "excellent" hairs "at the right development stage for extracting DNA" had been found on the plaster cast of the corpse, and had been submitted for analysis to the Australian Centre for Ancient DNA at the University of Adelaide. Processing the results could reportedly take up to a year. In February 2018, the University of Adelaide team obtained a high definition analysis of the mitochondrial DNA from the hair sample from Somerton Man. They found that he and his mother belonged to haplogroup H4a1a1a, which is possessed by only 1% of Europeans.

On 26 July 2022, Abbott announced that he and American genealogist Colleen Fitzpatrick had used DNA websites such as Ancestry.com to build a family tree of over 4,000 people. In March 2022, they narrowed this to Melbourne man Carl "Charles" Webb, an electrical engineer and instrument maker, who had no death record. Abbott said that on 23 July, "the final pieces of DNA proof were found to fully identify Webb as the Somerton Man." South Australian Police and Forensic Science South Australia said they had not verified Abbott's findings, and that further comment would be provided "when results from the testing are received."

Further reading

• Who's Who in South Australia, Ed. Suzannah Pearce, Publ: Crown Content Pty Ltd., Melbourne, Australia, 2007, p. 1, ISBN 978-1-74095-142-5

References

1. ^ "Profiles of Academic Staff".
2. IEEE Trans. Instrum. & Meas., Vol. 51, No. 2, p. 309, 2002
3. What's happening in the IEEE, March 2005 Archived 2018-09-16 at the Wayback Machine Our newest Fellow: Dr Derek Abbott FIEEE
4. "Derek Abbott - the Mathematics Genealogy Project".
5. IEEE Fellows - A Archived 2012-11-20 at the Wayback Machine, retrieved 2012-10-28.
6. "2024 Laureate Profile: Professor Derek Abbott". Australian Research Council. Retrieved 2024-11-19.
7. Royal, Simon (27 March 2009). "Somerton Beach Mystery Man". Stateline South Australia. Australian Broadcasting Corporation. Archived from the original on 18 September 2014.
8. ^ Penelope Debelle, The Advertiser (SA Weekend Supplement) "A Body, A Secret Pocket and a Mysterious Code". 1 August 2009
9. Stateline South Australia, "Somerton Beach Mystery Man", Transcript, Broadcast 15 May 2009. Archived 16 February 2016 at the Wayback Machine. Retrieved 3 August 2009.
10. "Timeline of the Taman Shud Case". Professor Derek Abbott. Retrieved 20 April 2010.
11. Stateline South Australia, "Somerton Beach Mystery Man", Transcript, Broadcast 27 March 2009. Archived 4 March 2016 at the Wayback Machine. Retrieved 27 April 2009.
12. Emily Watkins "We may never know" The Advertiser 16 October 2011 Pg 37
13. Watkins, Emily (16 July 2013). "After 65 years, new picture could reveal Unknown Man's identity | News.com.au". news.com.au. Archived from the original on 16 July 2013. Retrieved 17 July 2013.
14. Wood, Graeme. "The Lost Man". California Sunday. Archived from the original on 2020-06-01. Retrieved 4 June 2015.
15. Wood, Graeme. "The Lost Man". California Sunday. Archived from the original on 1 June 2020. Retrieved 4 June 2015.
16. Cheshire, Ben; Chenery, Susan (4 November 2019). "Marriage and a mystery: Somerton Man's romantic twist". ABC News. Retrieved 24 April 2022.
17. Whiteman, Hilary (1 June 2021). "The Somerton man died alone on a beach in 1948. Now Australian scientists are close to solving the mystery". CNN. Retrieved 24 April 2022.
18. "How the Somerton Man played cupid from the grave". ABC News. 14 December 2017. Retrieved 1 December 2018.
19. Klein, Alice. "Who was the Somerton Man? Solving Australia's coldest case". Retrieved 1 December 2018.
20. Keane, Daniel; Marchant, Gabriella (26 July 2022). "Somerton Man identified as Melbourne electrical engineer, researcher says". ABC. Retrieved 26 July 2022.
21. Walter, Riley; Sulda, Dixie (26 July 2022). "Somerton Man mystery 'solved' as Adelaide uni researcher names body on beach". The Advertiser. Retrieved 26 July 2022.
22. Whiteman, Hilary (26 July 2022). "Somerton man mystery 'solved' as DNA points to man's identity, professor claims". CNN. Retrieved 26 July 2022.

• 1960 births
• Living people
• Fellows of the IEEE
• People educated at Holland Park School
• Alumni of Loughborough University
• University of Adelaide alumni
• Recipients of the M. A. Sargent Medal