FACTBOX: Federal Reserve Board: Who's Who

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Community banker Elizabeth Duke took the oath of office as a member of the Federal Reserve's Board of Governors on Tuesday and will vote at a meeting on interest rates later in the day, the Fed said.

Her swearing-in brings the normally seven-person board up to six and could give Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke a fresh ally for a steady policy course at a time a number of the regional Fed bank presidents are pushing for early rate hikes.

Members of the board are nominated by the president and confirmed by the Senate.

The board is the heart of the U.S. central bank system, which sets interest rates and oversees the banking and payment system. It is supported by a regional structure of 12 Federal Reserve banks spread around the country, whose presidents also take part in regular monetary policy debates.

There are a total of seven board seats. A full term lasts 14 years, though board members can be appointed to serve out the unexpired term of a vacated seat. The chairman and vice chairman are named by the president from among the board members and confirmed by the Senate to a term of four years that is separate from their term as a board member.

Following are brief sketches of the current members:

CHAIRMAN BEN BERNANKE

Born: December 1953 in Augusta, Georgia

Took office: February 1, 2006

Chairman's term expires: January 31, 2010

Board term expires: January 31, 2020

Background: A former professor at Princeton University and head of the school's economics department, Bernanke previously served as board governor from 2002 to 2005, when he left to be chairman of President George W. Bush's Council of Economic Advisers, where he served until becoming Fed chairman.

A noted scholar of the Great Depression, Bernanke applied the lessons he learned from studying that devastating episode when confronting the U.S. subprime mortgage crisis. This included slashing interest rates and pumping billions of dollars into the financial system to prevent money markets from freezing completely.

This muscular action helped restore his image on Wall Street, which initially perceived him as somewhat bookish in comparison to his crisis-tested, politically savvy predecessor, Alan Greenspan.

A preeminent economist, Bernanke has published widely, including several economics textbooks. He was also director of the Monetary Economics Program at the private National Bureau of Economic Research and a member of the NBER's Business Cycle Dating Committee, the accepted arbiter of U.S. recessions.

Bernanke received a B.A. in economics in 1975 from Harvard University (summa cum laude) and a Ph.D. in economics in 1979 from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.