Mae Jemison is an American physician and NASA astronaut. She became the first African American woman to travel in space in 1992, when she went into orbit aboard the Space Shuttle Endeavour.
Jemison was born in 1956 in Decatur, Alabama. At the age of three, Jemison’s family moved to Chicago so that she and her siblings could have access to better education. Jemison was convinced that she would achieve her dream of going to space from a young age and began studying nature to gain an understanding of science. As a child, her teachers tried to disuade her from a career in science, suggesting a nurse would be more appropriate for her. Jemison, inspired by Martin Luther King’s attitude, audacity, and bravery refused to deviate from her early career plans. She felt that King and the civil rights movement had begun to break down the barriers to human potential and would do everything she can to achieve her dream.
Jemison was interested in the arts as well as science, and began dancing at the age of 11. After graduating from Chicago’s Morgan Park High School in 1973 as a consistent honour student, she continued her education at Stanford University at the age of 16 on a National Achievement Scholarship. During her senior year, she struggled to decide on whether or not to pursue her love of dance, or to apply for medical school. Her mother advised her that “You can always dance if you’re a doctor, but you can’t doctor if you’re a dancer”. Jemison graduated with a Bachelor of Science degree in chemical engineering and a Bachelor of Arts in African and African-American studies in 1997. She then took her mother’s advice, and enrolled at Cornell University Medical College. While there, she had the opportunity to study in Cuba and Kenya and worked at a Cambodian refugee camp in Thailand. She graduated with a M.D in 1981 and interned at Los Angeles County-USC Medical Center before working as a general practitioner with INA/Ross Loos Medical Group in Los Angeles until December 1982.
In 1983, Jemison joined the Peace Corps and served as a Peace Corps Medical Officer responsible for the health of Peace Corps Volunteers serving in Liberia and Sierra Leone for two and a half years. Jemison also taught and working with the Center for Disease Control (CDC) helping with research for various vaccines. In 1985, Jemison returned to the United States and began working as a general practitioner. Inspired by astronaut Sally Ride and African-American actress Nichelle Nichols, portrayal of Lieutenant Uhura in Star Trek, she applied to the NASA astronaut training program. In 1987, on her second application she was one of 15 candidates chosen from 2,000 applicants. She was the first African-American woman to be admitted into the astronaut training program. After a year of training, which included launch support activities at the Kennedy Space Centre in Florida and verification of Shuttle computer software in the Shuttle Avionics Integration Laboratory (SAIL), she flew her only space mission aboard aboard the Endeavour on mission in 1992. Jemison was a Mission Specialist on STS-47, responsible for conducting crew-related scientific experiments on weightlessness and motion sickness. She took a small photograph of Bessie Coleman, the first African-American woman to fly an airplane in a public airshow with her on the flight. On her return to Earth, she stated that society should recognise how much both women and members of other minority groups can contribute if given the opportunity.
In 1993, Jemison resigned from NASA to pursue her interest in how social sciences interact in technologies. She founded her own company, the Jemison Group to research, market and develop science and technology for daily live. She also founded the Dorothy Jemison Foundation for Excellence, named after her mother. She is an advocate for the important of science and technology, and for getting minority students interested in science, and the foundation runs projects like The Earth We Share (TEWS), an international science camp where students, ages 12 to 16, work to solve current global problems, like “How Many People Can the Earth Hold” and “Predict the Hot Public Stocks of The Year 2030. She became a professor of Environmental Studies at Dartmouth College from 1995 to 2002 and in 1999, she founded BioSentient Corp, where she has been working on the development of a portable device that allows mobile monitoring of the involuntary nervous system. She has also been a Professor-at-Large at Cornell University.
In 1993, Jemison became the first real astronaut ever to appear on Star Trek, when she played Lieutenant Palmer in the Star Trek: The Next Generation episode “Second Chances”. She has also appeared as a host and technical consultant of the Discovery Channel science series World of Wonder and in 2006, she participated in African American Lives, a PBS television miniseries hosted by Henry Louis Gates, Jr., that traced the family history of eight famous African Americans using historical research and genetic techniques. She is an active public speaker, promoting science and technology and motivating and inspiring young people in education. Jemison has also been a been a member of several prominent organisations, including the American Medical Association, the American Chemical Society and the American Association for the Advancement of Science, and served on the board of directors of the World Sickle Cell Foundation from 1990 to 1992.
Jemison has received numerous honours, including the 1988 Essence Science and Technology Award,1993 Kilby Science Award, 1993 Montgomery Fellow, Dartmouth and an induction to the International Space Hall of Fame in 2004. She has also been awarded the NASA Space Flight Medal. Jemison has been awarded with a number of honorary degrees, and there are institutions named after her including the Mae C. Jemison Science and Space Museum, Wilbur Wright College, Chicago, Illinois, Mae C. Jemison Academy, an alternative public school in Detroit, Michigan, the Bluford Drew Jemison STEM Academy, a public charter school in Baltimore, Maryland and the Mae Jemison School, an elementary public school in Hazel Crest, Illinois.
Jemison is currently leading the 100 Year Starship (100YSS) an initiative seed funded by DOD’s Defense Advanced Research Project Agency (DARPA) to assure the capability for human interstellar space travel to another star is possible within the next 100 years.