Derek Abbott says DNA from hairs taken from the man more than a decade ago was recently checked with other samples, identifying the mystery man as Carl Webb, an engineer born in Victoria in 1905.
Using DNA submitted to global databases, the University of Adelaide academic said he was able to locate a distant cousin on Mr Webb’s father’s side and then build out his family tree.
“We’ve been trying to extract DNA all these years. It’s a very difficult problem to get it out of old hair,” he told radio 5AA.
“But the technology has improved a lot over the years.”
By February of this year, Prof. Abbott’s team had accomplished enough sophistication to use that DNA to find a cousin of the Somerton man.
“Our tree has a total of 4,000 people when we built it, and there are only two people in this tree with no date of death,” he said.
“What we’ve been able to do is track down Carl Webb’s maternal side and find someone today who’s done one of these genealogy DNA tests and we found a match.
“We now have next other matches. We are confident, with 99.9 percent confidence that this is the man.”
Police have yet to confirm the man’s identity after he exhumed his remains last year in renewed efforts to solve the mystery.
In a statement, a spokesman for the state coroner said DNA testing by government forensic scientists had not yet been completed.
“Once that work is complete, a letter will be submitted to the state coroner who will assess whether Somerton Man’s remains can be formally identified,” the statement said.
Police said they were encouraged by the latest developments and were “cautiously optimistic” that this could represent a breakthrough.
Prof Abbott said he would work with police and the coroner regarding his DNA findings so that the man’s identity can be officially identified in state files.
On December 1, 1948, the man’s body was found on Somerton Beach when passers-by noticed him against a sea wall.
His cause of death remains unknown and many theories have been put forward about his identity, ranging from an ostracized lover to a Cold War spy.
An initial police investigation and inquest left the case unsolved, with the case being particularly puzzling due to a number of items found with the body.
They include a suitcase, items of clothing that have had their labels removed, incoherent writing that is believed to be a code, the poetry book The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam and a torn piece of paper with the Persian words “Tamam Shud” meaning finished .
Prime Minister Peter Malinauskas said that if the man’s identity were discovered, it would be a “great revelation to what is a long-held mystery”.
“Most importantly, it gives the Somerton man himself a measure of dignity,” the prime minister said.