Professor Sue Black, 62

President of St John’s College, University of Oxford

Fortune tellers say they can see the future written in a person’s palm, but Professor Sue Black studies the back of the hand to look into a person’s past.

Like fingerprints, vein patterns are unique to each person, and the forensic scientist has been mapping suspects’ hands to help nab child predators for 17 years. 

Prof Black first explored this novel idea in 2004, when the British police came to her for help on a sexual abuse case.

They sent her footage of a young girl being abused. Only the perpetrator’s hand and forearm were caught on camera. The girl, who took the video for evidence, had alleged that it was her father abusing her.

“The police came to us and said how identifiable is a hand or a forearm? We said we have no idea... but what I know is that veins are very variable. And when you look at the back of your right hand and compare it to your left hand, it’s different,” said Prof Black.

Fortunately, the veins on the arm became more marked and visible on the video, thanks to near-infrared light from the camera. When Prof Black compared the hand in the video with a picture of the father’s hand, it was a match.

But there was an element of doubt then because there were no statistics showing how distinct or unique the vein pattern is.

“We hadn’t done the research that says this pattern is one in 10,000 or one in a million,” the professor added.

In the end, the father was acquitted, not because of the scientist’s findings. The barrister told Prof Black that it was because the girl did not break down or cry in court.

“At that point, we felt science could have gone much further,” said Prof Black.

From 2006, she and her team at the University of Dundee in Scotland started building a database of hand images – provided by volunteers – to map their vein patterns, skin creases, moles, birthmarks and pigmentation. From 2003 to 2018, she was professor of anatomy and forensic anthropology at Dundee.

As the database grew and the likelihood of one person’s arm matching another’s shrunk, the hand became a significant clue in sexual abuse cases in Britain and abroad as paedophiles would often film and share their acts online.

To date, Prof Black’s work has helped to secure about 30 life sentences and a total of about 500 years of jail time for all the accused. Since 2010, her team has been taking on about 50 cases a year.

Now, the database has grown to nearly 250,000 images, and her team – under a joint project based in the University of Lancaster in England – is training computers to automatically pick out unique hand features.

By end-2024, the project should culminate into artificial intelligence algorithms that can be used on Interpol or police databases to help the authorities hunt down criminals faster.

In 2016, Prof Black was appointed Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire for services to forensic anthropology.

She is also a world expert in identifying disaster victims. She was called upon as a lead forensic anthropologist after the 1998 Kosovo War to identify the remains of those who died.

Days after the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami, the anatomist flew to Thailand to help identify victims.

Hundreds of bodies – many badly decomposed and bloated – were collected and left at the temples of the battered Khao Lak beach resort.

“The biggest enemy for identification is decomposition,” said Prof Black. She recalled that the majority of victims were identified through dental records as teeth are durable and resistant to decomposition.

As a preventative measure – as she puts it – Prof Black even dissuaded her three daughters from getting braces because the crookedness of their teeth is an identifier. Her second one eventually got braces on dentist’s orders.

She also “body-mapped” two of her girls by taking their fingerprints, blood samples and strands of their hair, and recording their birthmarks. Her daughters are now 27, 29 and 40.

She added: “I’ve been in the whole mode of DVI (disaster victim identification) training, and I thought I need to record all the information for my children. But if I’ve got it, I’ll never need it.”

Having worked with remains and bodies for the bulk of her career, Prof Black has also planned after-death matters for herself.

She hopes that her body will go to the anatomy department at the University of Dundee, where science students will dissect her.

“They will take you apart from head to toe, and I want them to learn everything they possibly can. And if any (organs) are any good to anyone who is alive, they must be taken.”

She would also like them to cremate the remaining flesh and keep her skeleton in the lab.

With a sparkle in her eye, Prof Black said: “Then I could carry on teaching for the rest of my death, which I think is brilliant. Death isn’t the end.”