John Jaszczak is Director and Curator of the A. E. Seaman Mineral Museum of Michigan Technological University. He is also a professor of physics at Michigan Tech, where he has taught and conducted research since 1991. His childhood love of minerals inspired him to become a scientist- first in chemistry and then in physics, but always with minerals in mind. While working on the shapes of quasicrystals for his Ph.D. degree in Physics at Ohio State University, John was a member of the Columbus Rock and Mineral Club, and there first met Rob Lavinsky. He has had an inexplicable interest in the mineralogy of graphite for over 40 years, and has over 2,000 graphite specimens in his collection. His mineralogical interests also include unusual crystal shapes, diamonds, and hemimorphic minerals. He is particularly interested in graphite and other minerals from the famous Merelani gem mines in northern Tanzania, from which he has helped describe the two new minerals merelaniite (named the 2016 Mineral of the Year by the International Mineralogical Association) and richardsite. Jaszczakite was named in his honor in 2017.