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". 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. Decryption of the "code" 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