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Fraser Bergersen rose from humble beginnings in New Zealand to become a leading microbiologist who specialised in the physiology and biochemistry of legume nitrogen fixation. He and his family emigrated toAustralia in 1954.Virtually all of his careerwas spent in Canberra at CSIRO Plant Industry. In the 1970s, Bergersen and colleagues achieved world-wide prominence when they elucidated the role of leghaemoglobin in facilitating oxygen diffusion to the Bradyrhizobium bacteroids in soybean nodules and in the nitrogen fixation process itself. During the rest of his working life, Fraser Bergersen contributed greatly to understanding the role of oxygen, the mode of its delivery, and terminal oxidases in all forms of biological nitrogen fixation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]