[en] The Fano factor for germanium cooled to 77.4 K has been determined from a semiempirical analysis of the measured energy resolution of a HPGe γ-ray spectrometer of active volume 113.2 cm³. Twenty nine γ-ray energies spanning the range from 14 to 6129 keV were used in this study. The dispersion due to incomplete charge collection was assessed experimentally by making measurements over a wide range of applied bias. Plots of the peak centroid shift and the peak width squared against the reciprocal of the voltage applied to the detector, were non-linear. Both exhibited plateaus for large applied voltages. Thus, by operating in the plateau region, the Fano factor could be extracted from the variation of the observed line width as a function of energy, while the detector was known to be functioning close to the position of perfect charge collection. The value of the Fano factor obtained in this work, averaged over the energy range 14-6129 keV, was 0.112 ± 0.001. It is recommended that more, high quality, measurements be made. (author)