John Postgate, English microbiologist, author, and academic (died 2014)

John Raymond Postgate, FRS was an English microbiologist and writer, latterly Professor Emeritus of Microbiology at the University of Sussex. Postgate's research in microbiology investigated nitrogen fixation, microbial survival, and sulphate-reducing bacteria. He worked for the Agricultural Research Council's Unit of Nitrogen Fixation from 1963 until he retired, by then its director, in 1987. In 2011, he was described as a "father figure of British microbiology".