The effect of pressure on the melting temperature of iron has been measured by passing current through a very fine wire of pure iron held under pressure in a diamond anvil pressure cell. The temperature was measured by optical pyrometry, and the pressure was calculated from the lattice parameters of iron at room temperature after being heat-treated. On the basis of recent work by Strong et. al. on measuring the Δ-&ggr;-liquid triple point and the initial slope between &ggr; and liquid iron, we have calculated the melting temperature for &ggr; iron to about 200 kbar. A third-order polynomial equation fitted to our data yields the following equation: Tm=1718+3.85(P-52)-1.95¿10 2(P-52)2+6.24¿10 5(P-52)3, where Tm is the melting temperature in degrees Celsius and P is the pressure in kilobars. When the linear relationship of TmΔV/V0 proposed by Kraut and Kennedy (1966) was used, the extrapolation of the present data to the inner core-outer core boudary. 3.3 Mbar, yields temperatures between 3460¿ and 3870¿C if the inner core consists of pure iron with the &ggr; phase.