Sir Derek William Bowett, CBE, QC, FBA (20 April 1927 – 23 May 2009) was an international lawyer and academic.

After gaining a first class degree Bowett was encouraged to continue his studies by Hersch Lauterpacht the then Whewell Professor of International Law.

There he experienced, from a distance, the Six Day War and, much more directly, its effects in terms of the great increase in the number of refugees falling under UNRWA's remit.

In 1964 while a Fellow of Queens' he was asked by the newly independent Government of Somalia to advise it on its territorial disputes with Ethiopia and Kenya.

On arrival in Mogadishu he was asked to draft a diplomatic note closing the British Embassy, on the basis that Britain was refusing to give effect to a plebiscite in the Northern Frontier District of Kenya, which had voted by a large majority to reunite with Somalia.