Elimination by role and chronology: M. W. Beijerinck isolated the Rhizobium bacterium responsible for nodulation in 1888, explaining the mechanism but not being first to observe the phenomenon itself.
A. I. Virtanen later investigated the biochemistry of the symbiosis and won a Nobel Prize for that work, decades after the basic observation had been established. G. S. Sekhon is an Indian soil scientist unconnected with this historical discovery.
J. B. Boussingault, working earlier in the nineteenth century, used field nitrogen-balance experiments to show that legume crops added nitrogen to the soil beyond what was supplied, making him the first to record the phenomenon, even before its microbial cause was known.