Mae Jemison

Mae Carol Jemison was born on 17 October 1956 in Decatur, Alabama, and moved with her family to Chicago at age three, where her parents encouraged her early fascination with science. She has said that as a child watching the Apollo missions on television, she was frustrated that there were no women astronauts, and simply assumed she would become one anyway, undeterred by the absence of role models in the field at the time.

Jemison enrolled at Stanford University at age 16, graduating in 1977 with degrees in chemical engineering and African and Afro-American studies, before earning her medical degree from Cornell University Medical College in 1981. During her medical training she travelled to Cuba, Kenya and Thailand providing primary medical care, and after graduating she served as a Peace Corps medical officer for Liberia and Sierra Leone from 1983 to 1985, managing healthcare programmes and research for volunteers and the local population, including work on vaccine research.

Returning to the United States, Jemison worked as a general practitioner in Los Angeles while pursuing engineering studies, and in 1987 was selected by NASA for its astronaut training programme from among more than 2,000 applicants, becoming one of just fifteen selected. On 12 September 1992, Jemison flew aboard the Space Shuttle Endeavour as a mission specialist, becoming the first Black woman to travel to space, spending nearly eight days in orbit conducting experiments in life sciences and materials processing.

Jemison left NASA in 1993, stating she wanted to pursue how social sciences and technology intersect with everyday life, particularly in the developing world. She founded the Jemison Group, a technology consulting company focused on the intersection of science, technology and social change, and taught as a professor at Dartmouth College, where she directed the Jemison Institute for Advancing Technology in Developing Countries.

In 1994 Jemison founded The Earth We Share, an international science camp for teenagers designed to develop critical thinking and problem-solving skills, which she has continued running for decades. In 2012 she was selected to lead the 100 Year Starship project, a NASA and DARPA-seeded initiative researching the science, technology and social frameworks required to make human travel to another star system achievable within a century.

Jemison has received numerous honorary doctorates and awards throughout her career and remains an active public speaker and advocate for science education, particularly for young women and girls from underrepresented backgrounds. She has also appeared as a guest on Star Trek: The Next Generation, becoming the first real astronaut to appear on the series, a moment she has described as a meaningful full-circle connection to the science fiction that helped inspire her own ambitions as a child.