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          MMGM announces the establishment of two student scholarships for the Maine Pegmatite Workshop

Frank Perham (1934-2023) is a legend in Maine mining and is Maine’s iconic pegmatite miner.  From an early age, Frank loved exploring pegmatites and searching for gem pockets. He was present as either a miner or observer at all of the significant pegmatite pocket discoveries of the last seven decades. The most famous of these discoveries was the series of pockets opened at the Dunton pegmatite, Newry, Maine, from 1972-1974. Frank was the contract miner for Plumbago Mining Corporation, so he had the thrill of drilling into the pockets, including the “Big Pocket” that produced over a ton of gem watermelon tourmaline. In 1977, a new mineral discovered at the Bell Pit and Dunton, Newry Hill, Newry, was named “Perhamite.” in honor of Frank C. Perham, geologist and pegmatite miner of West Paris, Maine. He was part of the faculty of the Maine Pegmatite Workshop since its inception in 2001. Frank was a gifted storyteller and his recollections of individual pockets were astonishing.  Our goal is to establish a $25,000.00 endowment in Frank’s name that will permanently fund a yearly scholarship.

Alessandro Guastoni was born in Milan, Italy on January 17, 1966. From an early age, he was interested in science, particularly mineralogy. In 1977 he began to attend the Gruppo Mineralogico Lombardo participating in conferences and social field trips for mineral hunting. In 1985 he began his university studies at the Department of Earth Sciences of the University of Milan. He graduated in 1989 with a masters thesis on the petrography of Val del Cervo Pluton. He worked for Geoservices International until 1995. He worked for Civic Museum of Natural History in Milan as an assistant curator until 2006. In 2006 he became curator of the Mineralogical Museum of the University of Padua. In 2009 he began his Ph.D. at the University of Padua on Oligocene pegmatites of the central-western Alps. Since 2016 he was Chief Editor of the “Rivista Mineralogica Italiana”.  He died on December 7, 2022, hunting pegmatitic minerals at the Malpensata dike on the Piona peninsula.The goal is to raise $25,00.00 to establish an endowment to permanently fund a yearly scholarship for sudents from abroad.

To apply go to https://Mainemineralmuseum.org 

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