Mae Jemison was born October 17th, 1956 in Decatur, Alabama. She was the first African-American woman to travel in space when she orbited Earth in the Space Shuttle Endeavour on September 12th, 1992. She has also been a physician and a professor.
Although Jemison was born in Alabama, her family moved to Chicago, IL when she was three because of the better opportunities for education. Growing up, she was always fascinated with space travel and science. As a little girl, she always assumed she would go into space. Along with science, she also loved the arts, participating in all different kinds of dance starting at the age of 9 and was also involved in school. Upon her senior year of college, she debated going to either medical school or becoming a professional dancer. She graduated from Stanford in 1997 with a B.S. in chemical engineering as well as a B.A. in African and Afro-American studies. She got her doctorate at Cornell Medical College in 1981 and traveled to different countries to provide medical care. Also during medical school, Jemison continued taking dance lessons and built a studio in her home to choreograph modern jazz and African dance shows.
Jemison worked a while for the Peace Corps in Sierra Leone. After that, Jemison applied for astronaut program at NASA. Although she was turned down at first, she was accepted on her second application in 1987. She was part of the first class of astronauts after the Challenger accident in 1986 and launched the first flight after the accident. She flew her first and only space flight from September 12th to the 20th as the mission specialist. It was a cooperative mission between the US and Japan. Jemison spent 190 hours, 30 minutes, and 23 seconds in space.
After her work in NASA, Jemison pursued many different endeavors. She started her own research company in 1993, founded BioSentient Corp in 1999 to research monitoring the nervous system, and was even in an episode of Star Trek. Throughout her career, Jemison received many different honors and awards. She is currently a professor at Cornell University and continues to advocate education in science, especially for minorities.
Information received from Wikipedia: Mae Jemison
Thanks to Renee Shurilla for this post!
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