Mae C. Jemison

Astronaut, scientist, and physician

• Born: October 17, 1956
• Place of Birth: Decatur, Alabama

SCIENTIST, ASTRONAUT, AND PHYSICIAN

In addition to opening the field of space exploration to African American women, Jemison also dedicated her substantial later career to education and to using her experience as a business leader to find solutions to medical and environmental problems.

AREAS OF ACHIEVEMENT: Business; Medicine; Science and technology

Early Life

Mae Carol Jemison was born on October 17, 1956, to Charlie Jemison and Dorothy Green in Decatur, Alabama, less than thirty miles from Huntsville, home of the Marshall Space Center. When Jemison was three years old, her mother moved her and her siblings, Ada Sue and Ricky, to Chicago, Illinois, to complete her education and find better employment; Jemison’s father joined them two months later.

Jemison spent most of her childhood in Chicago and considered the city her hometown. In kindergarten, she declared her intention to become a scientist to a disbelieving teacher. Her innate intelligence and ambition, plus the example of her mother’s return to college to become a teacher, fueled Jemison’s determination to achieve her own goals.

As a young girl, Jemison grew up amid gangs in the primarily African American neighborhood of Woodlawn and witnessed the Chicago riots of 1968. When she was ten years old, her family moved to an all-white neighborhood that slowly integrated over the next few years. In spite of the obstacles she faced, Jemison pursued science and began studying sickle-cell anemia while still in high school. She finished high school at age fifteen and graduated from Stanford University in 1977 with a degree in chemical engineering, having also fulfilled the requirements for a second bachelor's in African and Afro-American studies. Jemison went on to attend Cornell University Medical College (now Weill Cornell Medicine), earning her medical degree in 1981.

Life’s Work

Jemison’s professional life allowed her to contribute to the advancement of science in both the medical field and the national space program, which led to her role as the first female African American astronaut in 1992.

While Jemison was a high school student, she researched sickle-cell anemia for a science fair project. She studied samples in a laboratory and worked with other scientists to form a working hypothesis. As an undergraduate, she intended to work in the biomedical field but instead opted to forgo a prestigious and lucrative medical career to join the Peace Corps. Jemison served for more than two years as a Peace Corps medical officer in Liberia and Sierra Leone before returning to the United States in 1985 to work in medicine.

After undergoing a rigorous selection process, which was delayed for a year following the Space Shuttle Challenger disaster in 1986, Jemison was chosen to participate in the prestigious National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) astronaut program. She remained with NASA from her acceptance in June 1987 until March 1993. During this time, she also worked in launch support at the Kennedy Space Center and dealt with computer software in the Shuttle Avionics Integration Laboratory.

Beginning September 12, 1992, Jemison was part of the crew of the Space Shuttle Endeavour. Her first flight was the second launch of the Endeavour and the fiftieth space-shuttle flight in the space program’s history. During that eight-day flight, Jemison served as the science mission specialist on STS-47 Spacelab-J, the first joint mission between the United States and Japan. The mission also was noted for including Mamoru Mohri, the first official Japanese astronaut in space.

While on Endeavour, Jemison and her colleagues conducted forty-four experiments, twenty-four in materials science and twenty in life science, which meshed well with her medical and engineering background. Overall, Jemison spent about 190 hours in space on her only shuttle flight.

Jemison's interest in space exploration had been fueled by her childhood love for the science-fiction television series Star Trek, which first aired in the late 1960s, and particularly by the character of Lieutenant Uhura (Nichelle Nichols)—an unprecedented role for a black woman at the time, and one of the first black female television characters who was not a servant. Before her Endeavour flight, Jemison had called Nichols to thank her personally; after leaving the space program in 1993, Jemison made a special cameo as Lieutenant Palmer on the follow-up series Star Trek: The Next Generation.

Also in 1993, Jemison formed the Jemison Group, a technology consulting firm based in Houston, Texas, and the Dorothy Jemison Foundation for Excellence (DJF), a nonprofit group named in honor of her mother. In 1994, the DJF began funding The Earth We Share (TEWS), a science camp for teenagers that focuses on global problem-solving. Through the Jemison Group, she later founded BioSentient Corporation, which focuses on developing mobile medical monitoring equipment. She was inducted into the National Women's Hall of Fame in 1993 and the International Space Hall of Fame in 2004.

Jemison was a professor of environmental studies at Dartmouth College from 1995 to 2002 and was one of Cornell University's Andrew D. White Professors-at-Large from 1999 to 2005. In 2012, she and the DJF won the bid to lead the joint NASA–Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) project 100 Year Starship, an organization with the stated goal of “mak[ing] the capability of human travel beyond our solar system a reality within the next 100 years.”

In July 2021, two White billionaires, Virgin Galactic's Richard Branson and Blue Origin's Jeff Bezos made two respective successful civilian flights into space. Jemison, who was interviewed by NBC News reporters on July 20, offered the following comment on the flights, as quoted by Stacy M. Brown for the Washington Informer (22 July 2021): “I think in 10 years, the excitement of space travel will continue. This is clearly built on the work from 1961 provided by NASA. Now, with the participation of the commercial industry, I hope to see the ticket prices go down and see more humans land on the Moon.”

Significance

Jemison made history as the first Black woman in space and has remained a role model for her innovative work in medical research, computer science, and engineering. She also has shown versatility and ambition with her achievements in space exploration, education, and business leadership.

Bibliography

Alagna, Magdelena. Mae Jemison: The First African American Woman in Space. New York: Rosen, 2004. Print.

Brown, Stacy M. “Civilian Space Travel Moves Forward with Jeff Bezos’s Blue Origin Venture,” The Washingtion Informer, 22 July 2021, www.washingtoninformer.com/civilian-space-travel-moves-forward-with-jeff-bezoss-blue-origin-venture/. Accessed 29 Jan. 2025.

Gates, Henry Louis, Jr. In Search of Our Roots: How 19 Extraordinary African Americans Reclaimed Their Past. New York: Crown, 2009. Print.

Gibson, Karen Bush. Women in Space: 23 Stories of First Flights, Scientific Missions, and Gravity-Breaking Adventures. Chicago: Chicago Rev., 2014. Print.

Jemison, Mae. Find Where the Wind Goes: Moments from My Life. New York: Scholastic, 2001. Print.

Katz, Jesse. “Shooting Star: Former Astronaut Mae Jemison Brings Her Message down to Earth.” Stanford Today July–Aug. 1996: 38–41. Stanford Today Online. Web. 19 Apr. 2016.

Oakes, Elizabeth H. “Jemison, Mae Carol.” Encyclopedia of World Scientists. By Oakes. Rev. ed. New York: Facts on File, 2007. 372–73. Print.

“Purpose.” 100 Year Starship. 100 Year Starship, 2013. Web. 19 Apr. 2016.

Ross-Nazzal, Jennifer. “Mae C. Jemison: The Right Stuff.” Texas Women: Their Histories, Their Lives. Ed. Elizabeth Hayes Turner, Stephanie Cole, and Rebecca Sharpless. Athens: U of Georgia P, 2015. 457–80. Print.

Sullivan, Otha Richard. Black Stars: African American Women Scientists and Inventors. Gen. ed. Jim Haskins. New York: Wiley, 2002. Print.

Weinberger, Sharon. “Former Astronaut to Lead Starship Effort.” BBC News. BBC, 5 Jan. 2012. Web. 19 Apr. 2016.