John J. Croat

John J. Croat is a materials researcher who discovered and developed rare earth-iron-boron permanent magnets, work credited equally to him and to Masato Sagawa, who arrived at the same magnets independently. Croat began by trying to make rapidly solidified materials, and that line of research led to resin-bonded magnets made from rapidly solidified neodymium-iron-boron powders. He also played a principal role in the mass-production technologies for those powders and for compression-bonded magnets. He received the 1994 Outstanding Engineering Achievement Award from the American Society of Metals, and the Engineering and Technology History Wiki also lists the IEEE Medal for Environmental and Safety Technologies among his awards. He is president of John Croat Consulting, Inc., in Naples, Florida.