Each individual may have his or her own particular body odor. To test this idea, and determine the chemical composition of individual odor, Dustin Penn and his collaborators collected underarm sweat samples from nearly 200 subjects from a village in the Austrian alps. They chemically analyzed the samples and performed statistical (pattern recognition) analyses of the chemical spectra. They found a large number of volatile compounds that provide both individual and gender-specific signatures, and moreover, they identified the chemical structures of many of these compounds. Their findings should help to provide a better understanding for the olfactory cues that are used to discriminate individuals and the sexes by their scent.

• Penn, DJ., Oberzaucher, E., Grammer, K., Fischer, G., Soini, HA., Wiesler, D., Novotny, MV., Dixon, SJ., Xu, Y. & Brereton, RG. (2006)
  Individual and gender fingerprints in human body odour.
  Journal of the Royal Society Interface
  published online on 2006, November 29
  
  Abstract
  

The article is featured in Nature: http://www.nature.com/news/2006/061127/full/061127-4.html

and in http://science.orf.at/science/news/146378

and in: http://www.zukunftwissen.apa.at/cms/zukunft-wissen/meldung.html?id=ZUK_20061129_ZUK0072