Frank Reith's research legacy (Fig. 1) is the discovery that bacteria make a 'home' on gold grains and these microorganisms render gold mobile in the surrounding environmentbelying the yellow metal's reputation for inertness and resistance to corrosion (Fig. 2). Frank was the first to integrate molecular characterisation with the 'classic' geochemical and morphological characterisation of placer gold grains, a radical step-change from the geological literature. His interdisciplinary approach to research integrated the latest cutting-edge techniques in chemical, spectroscopic, molecular and proteomic analysis. Frank had the gift of exciting people, of all walks of life, about his research. Throughout his career, he loved collaborative research and developed a vast and diverse network of interdisciplinary collaborators (friends) across the globe. Although his academic career was relatively short, Frank published >75 scientific papers, listed in the Appendix. To the broader geoscience community, Frank was a world-leading geomicrobiologist, fascinated by gold and devoted to delineating the interactions between bacteria and precious metals. He described himself more simply as, "the man with the gold bug". The man Frank Reith, the elder of two children, was born on the 11th of June 1972 to Elke and Ernst-Wolfgang Reith, a family of wine makers in the Rhine-Hesse region, Germany. Frank grew up in the town of Woerrstadt and attended High School in Nieder-Olm. After fulfilling his civil service obligations as an ambulance driver, he attended the University of Bayreuth and graduated in 1999 with a Master's Degree in Ecological Fig. 1. Frank Reith demonstrating gold panning near the historic Tomakin Park gold mine, New South Wales, Australia (photo 28/3/2007; Reith et al., 2005, 2006).