Dr. Mae C. Jemison

Mae C. Jemison blasted into orbit aboard the space shuttle Endeavour, September 12, 1992, the world's first woman of color to go into space and the city of Chicago's first astronaut in U.S. history.

Jemison attended Stanford University and graduated with a Bachelor of Science degree in Chemical Engineering, and fulfilled the requirements for an A.B. in African and Afro-American studies. She completed her medical doctorate at Cornell University. Jemison was a General Practitioner in Los Angeles with the INA/Ross Loos Medical Group, and then spent 2 ½ years as Area Peace Corps medical officer for Sierra Leone and Liberia in West Africa.

Jemison formed The Jemison Group, Inc., a technology design and consulting company. Projects have included consulting on the design and implementation of solar thermal electricity generation systems for developing countries and remote areas and the use of satellite-based telecommunications to facilitate health care delivery in West Africa. As Director of the Jemison Institute for Advancing Technology in Developing Countries and Professor of Environmental Studies at Dartmouth College, Jemison works on sustainable development. The institute is organizing a S.E.E.ing the Future (Science, Engineering and Education) Institute for the National Science Foundation, a project to consider the role of public funding in science and technology research in the future. Jemison also created The Earth We Share*. Jemison also serves as Bayer Corporation's national science literacy advocate.

Honors and awards include induction into the National Women's Hall of Fame; selection as one of the People magazines' 1993 "World's 50 Most Beautiful People"; Johnson Publications Black Achievement Trailblazers Award; the Kilby Science Award; National Medical Association Hall of Fame; selection as a Montgomery Fellow, Dartmouth College; and numerous honorary doctorates. She was the host and technical consultant of the "World of Wonder" series on the Discovery channel, appeared in an episode of Star Trek: the Next Generation, and was the subject of the PBS documentary The New Explorers.