Historical Impressions | A Life That Defies Belief

by Guy Miller, Vice Chair Emeritus, Chennault Aviation and Military Museum

I have a history question for you. Who is Mae Jemison?  Everyone should know this name; especially if you were born in the mid-1980s or earlier.  But in case you don’t know or remember let me refresh your memory.

Mae Carol Jemison was born in Decatur, Alabama on October 17, 1956.  Unhappy with job opportunities in the South, the family moved to Chicago when Mae was three.  Her parents valued education and took their children to visit and learn at the local museums.  As soon as Mae learned to read, her parents took her to the library where she checked out books about evolution, dinosaurs, stars and planets.  She also began dancing as a child and gained an appreciation for hard work, physical strength and grace.

Mae excelled in science during elementary school.  At a planetarium, she marveled over viewing stars from the perspective of the Southern Hemisphere seeing what the sky looked like thousands of years ago. In high school, she was always on the honor roll and graduated in 1973 when she was 16 years old.

Mae chose to attend Stanford University in California. Among other things, she studied Swahili, took modern, jive, swing, Haitian, Brazilian, and African dance classes and acted in a play and musical.  Mae graduated in 1977 with a Bachelor of Science degree in Chemical Engineering and a Bachelor of Arts degree in African American studies.

What does a Chemical Engineer do after graduation?  Go to Cornell Medical School of course. While a student, she led a study in Cuba for the American Medical Student Association and worked at a Cambodian refugee camp in Thailand.  Between school years, Mae traveled to Kenya where she worked for the African Medical Education and Research Foundation (the Flying Doctors), who traveled to remote areas in East Africa to provide health services.  Mae performed a community medicine projects and was a hospital surgical assistant.  After Kenya, Mae spent eight weeks traveling to Egypt, Greece, and Israel.

Mae graduated from Cornell Medical School in 1981.  She interned at the Los Angeles County Medical Center and later practiced general medicine.

Mae’s travel experiences inspired her to join the Peace Corps in 1983 where she served as a medical officer for two years.  As Area Peace Corps Medical Officer for Sierra Leone and Liberia, she was responsible for the health of all US Peace Corps volunteers, staff members, and embassy personnel.  She also managed a medical office, a laboratory, pharmacy, and volunteer health training in addition to being a primary care doctor.

All these accomplishments were only the beginning.

On June 18, 1983 Sally Ride became the first American woman in space.  Mae decided to apply to NASA’s astronaut program and was accepted in 1987 as one of the fifteen people chosen out of over 2,000 applications.

After completing astronaut training, Mae’s first assignment was STS-47 as a mission specialist aboard the Space Shuttle Endeavour.  When the shuttle launched on September 12, 1992, Mae Jemison became the first African American woman in space.

Taking advantage of the microgravity environment, where objects appear to be weightless, Mae  conducted over forty-four different experiments.  According to NASA, these experiments covered such fields as biotechnology, electronic materials, fluid dynamics and transport phenomena, glasses and ceramics, metals and alloys, and acceleration measurements.  Not to forget her medical background, NASA also allowed Mae to perform experiments on human health, cell separation and biology, developmental biology, animal and human physiology and behavior, space radiation, and biological rhythms. Her test subjects included the crew, Japanese koi fish, cultured animal and plant cells, chicken embryos, fruit flies, fungi and plant seeds, and frogs and frog eggs. After 127 orbits around the Earth , the shuttle landed at  Kennedy Space Center in Florida on September 20, 1992.

Mae later stated, “Strange, but I always knew I’d be here. Looking down and all around me, seeing the Earth, the moon, and the stars, I just felt that I belonged right there, and in fact, any place in the entire universe”

Mae’s astronaut career lasted for six years and she left NASA in 1993.  The fame she gained from her historic flight provided her “a more visible platform from which to discuss the importance of individuals taking responsibility not only for themselves, but also for how they treat others and this planet”

Wanting to apply her knowledge, skills, perspectives and energy in different innovative ways, post-NASA, Mae founded The Earth We Share, an international science camp, a consulting company, Jemison Group Inc., which focused on combining space and technology to improve daily life on earth, and more recently, 100 Year Starship, an initiative committed to ensuring that the capabilities for human interstellar travel beyond our solar system will exist in the next 100 years.  Mae also became a university professor and taught space technology and its benefits for developing countries at Dartmouth College.

Mae currently serves on the Board of Directors for many organizations including the Kimberly-Clark Corp., Scholastic, Inc., Valspar Corp., Morehouse College, Texas Medical Center, Texas State Product Development and Small Business Incubator, Greater Houston Partnership Disaster Planning and Recovery Task Force, and the National Institute of Biomedical Imaging and Bioengineering.  

Mae  Jemison’s accomplished life should be a true inspiration for everyone. In her own words, “Sometimes people want to tell you to act or to be a certain way. Sometimes people want to limit you because of their own imaginations.”