"Mae Carol Jemison"(October 17,1956).

Is an American physician and NASA astronaut.She became the first African American woman to travel in space when she went into orbit aboard the Space Shuttle on September 12,

1922.Mae Carol Jemison was born in Decatur,Alabama ,the youngest child of Charlie Jemison and Dorothy Green.Her father was a maintenance supervisor for a charity organization,and her mother worked most of career as an elementary school teacher of English and Math at the Beethoven School in Chicago,Illinois,when Mae was three years old,to take advantage of better educational opportunities there.Mae says that as a young girl growing up in Chicago she always assumed she would get into space."I through,by now we'd e going into space like you were going to work.She said it was easier to apply to be a shuttle astronault,"rather than waiting around in a cornfield,waiting for ET to pick me up or something.As a child growing up, Mae,learned to make connections to science by studying nature."It sounds a little gross but i was fascinated with pus,Mae said.Once when a splinter infected her thumb as a little girl,her mother turned it into a learning experience.She ended up doing a whole project about pus.Mae wouldn't let anyone dissuade her from pursuing a career in science."In kindergarten,my teacher asked me what i wanted to be when i grow up,and i told her a scientist, "Mae says."She said,don't you mean a nurse?" Now,there's nothing wrong with being a nurse,but that's not what i wanted to be.Mae says she was inspired by Martin Luther King Jr.But to her King's dream wasn't and elusive fantasy but a call to action.Too"often people paint him like Santa --smiley and inoffensive."But when i think of Martin i think of attitude,audacity,and bravery.Mae thinks the civil rights movement was all about breaking down barriers to human potential."The best way to make dreams come true is to wake up.She loved science growing up but she also loved the arts.She began dancing at the age of nine."Loved dancing! She love dancing! She took all kinds of dance-African Dancing,ballet Jazz,Modern-even Japanese dancing.She wanted to become a professional dancer."During high school she auditioned for the leading role of "Maria"in West Side Story.She didn't get the part put her dancing skills did get her into the line up as a background dancer.She had a problem with the singing but she danced pretty well enough for them to chose her.She thinks that people sometimes limit themselves and so rob themselves of the opportunity to realise their dreams.Mae love the sciences,and the arts.She saw the theatre as an outlet for this passion and so i decided to pursue this dream.Later during her senior year in college,she was trying to decide whether to go to New York to medical school or become a professional dancer.Her mother told her,"You can always dance if you're a doctor,but you can't doctor if you're a dancer.Mae graduated from Chicago's Morgan Park High School in 1973 and entered Stanford University at age 16.She was naive and stubborn enough that it didn't faze her .It was not until recently that i realize that 16 was particularly young or that that were even any issues associated with my parents having enough confidence in her to allow her to go that far away from home.Mae graduated from Stanford in 1977,receiving a B.S. degree in chemical engineering and fulfilling the requirements for a B.A.in African and Afro American studies.She said majoring in engineering as a black woman was difficult because race is always an issue in the United States.Some professors would just pretend she wasn't there.She would ask a question and a professor would act as if she was just dumb,the dumbest question he had ever heard.Then, a white guy would ask the same question,the professor would say,"That's a very astute observation.In an interview with the Des Monies Register in 2008 Mae said it was difficult to go to Stanford at 16,but thanks to her youthful arrogance may have helped her."I did have to say,I'm going to do this and i don't gave a damn."She points out the unfairness of the necessity for women and minorities to have that attitude in some fields.Mae obtained her Doctor of medicine degree in 1981 from Cornell Medical College (now Weil Medical College of Cornell University) She interned at Los Angeles County-USC medical center and later worked as a general practitioner.During medical school she traveled to Cuba, Kenya, and Thailand,to provide primary medical care to people living there.During her college years at Cornell Medical College,she took lessons at in modern dance at the Alvin Ailey school.Mae later built a dance studio in her home and has choreographed and produced several shows of modern jazz and African dance.After completing her medical,Mae, joined the staff of the Peace Corps and served as a Peace Corps Medical Officer from 1983 to 1985 responsible  for the health of Peace Corps Volunteers serving in Liberia and Sierra Leone.Her work in the Peace Corps included supervising the pharmacy,laboratory, medical staff as well as providing medical care,writing self-care manuals,and developing and implementing guidelines for health and safety issues.She also worked with the center for Disease Control (CDC) helping with research for various vaccines.Once while serving as a doctor for the Peace Corps,a volunteer got sick and another doctor,was diagnosed with malaria.The volunteer got progressively worse and Mae was sure it was meningitis with life-threatening complications that could not be treated in Sierra Leone.She called for an Air Force hospital plane based in Germany for a military medical evacuation at a cost of $8,000.The embassy questioned whether Mae had the authority to give such an order but she told them she didn't need any one's permission for medical decision.By the time the plane reached Germany With Mae and the volunteer on board,she had been up with the patient for 56 hours.The patient survived.While working in the Peace Corps in Sierra Leone,Mae a feline the companion who would share her life for the next 15 years- a cat named "Sneeze and Fleas. "He was white with touches of gray,and used to sit at the table with me.When i first got him he was eating the local foods,which were spicy sauces and stews over rice. When she started working on the space mission,he lived with her parents in Chicago and was the one thing i really couldn't wait to return to. When she thinks of home and what it means to her,she thinks of sneeze.After the flight of of Sally Ride in 1983,Mae felt the astronaut program had opened up and applied.Mae inspiration for joining NASA was actress Nichelle Nichols,who portrayed Lieutenant Uhura on Star Trek.She was turned down on her first application to NASA,but in 1987 Mae accepted on her second application.She got a call saying "Are you, still interested?and she said "yeah"Her work with NASA before her shuttle launch included support activities at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida and verification of Shuttle computer software in the Shuttle Avionics integration Laboratory (SAIL).She did things like help to support the launch of vehicles at Kennedy Space Center.She was the in the first class of astronaut selected after the Challenger accident back in 1986,...she actually worked the launch of the first flight after the Challenger accident.Mae flew her only space mission from September 12 to 20, as a Mission Specialist on ST'S-47."The first thing she saw from space was Chicago,she was working on the middeck where aren't many windows,and as they passed over Chicago,the commander called her up to the flight deck.It was such a a significant moment since she was a a little girl.Because of her love of dance and and as a salute to creativity,she took a poster from the Alvin Ailey American Dance Company along with her on the flight."Many people do not see a connection between science and dance,"Mae says.She consider them both to be expressions of the boundless creativity that people have to share with one another.Mae also took several small art art objects from West Africa countries to symbolize that space belongs to all nations.Also on the flight,according to Bessie Coleman biographer Doris L. Rich,Mae also took into orbit a photo of Coleman-Coleman was the first very first African American to ever fly an Airplane.ST'S-47  was a cooperative mission between the United States and Japan that included 44 Japanese and United States life science and materials processing experiments.Mae logged 190 hours,30 minutes, 23 seconds in space.She resigned from NASA in March 1993.She left NASA because she is very interested how social sciences interact with technologies." "People always think that of technology as something having silicon on it.But a pencil is technology.Any language is is technology.Technology is a tool we use to accomplish a particular task when one talks about appropriate technology in developing countries,appropriate may mean anything from fire to solar electricity.Although her departure from NASA was amicable,NASA was not thrilled to see her leave.NASA had spent a lot of money training her;she also filled a ninche,obviously,being a woman of color," says Homer Hickam, a training manager for NASA's space station efforts.In an interview With the Des Monies Register on October 16,2008 Mae said that she was not driven to be the "first black woman to go into space.""I wouldn't have cared less if 2,00 people had gone up before me...i would  still have had my hand up,"i want to do this. In 1993 Mae started her own company,the Jemison group that researches,markets,and develops science and technology for daily life.In 1993, Mae appeared on an episode of Star Trek The Next Generation.Lavar Burton found out,from a friend that Mae was a big Star Trek fan and asked her if she'd be interested in being on the show, and she said yeah!!The result was an appearance as Lieutenant Palmer in the episode"Second Chances"She has the distinction of being the first real astronaut ever to appear on Star Trek.She founded the Dorothy Jemison Foundation Excellence and named the foundation in honor of her mother.Her parents were the best scientists she knew,because they were always asking questions.One of the projects of Jemison's foundation is The Earth  We Share(TEWS),an international science camp where students ages 12-16,work to solve current problems, "like How Many People Can the Earth Hold"and "Predict the Hot Public Stocks of The Year 2030.The four-week residential program helps students build critical thinking and problem solving skills through experiential curriculum.Camps have been held at Dartmouth College,Colorado School of Mines, Choate Rosemary Hall and other sites around the United States.TEWS  was introduced internationally to high school students in day programs in South Africa and Tunisia.In 1999,TEW was expanded overseas to adults at the Zermatt Creativity and Leadership Symposium held in Switzerland.In 1999 Mae founded BioSentient Corp and has been working to develop a portable device that allows mobile monitoring of the involuntary nervous system.BioSentient has obtained the license to commercialize NASA's space-age technology known as Autogenic Feedback Training Exercise (AFTE) a patented technique that uses biofeedback and autogenic therapy to allow patients to monitor and control their physiology as possible treatment for anxiety and stress related disorders.BioSentient is examining AFTE as a treatment for anxiety,nausea,migraine and tension headaches,chronic pain,hypertension and hypertension,and stress-related disorders.In 2007,diagnostic test provider Gen-Probe Inc.announced that they would accept the resignation of Mae from their Board of Directors.She had failed to be re-elected to the board in a vote of the shareholders of the company at the company's May 31 annual stockholders meeting.The company said it believes that Mae failed re-election was the result of a recommendation by advisory firm Institutional Shareholder services that shareholders vote against her due to her poor attendance at board meetings.Gen-Probe determined that Mae two absences in 2006 were for valid reason said she had attended all regular and special board and committee meetings since September.On February 17,2008 Mae was the featured speaker for the 100th anniversary of the founding of the Alpha Kappa Sority She paid tribute to Alpha Kappa Alpha by carrying the sorority's banner with her on her shuttle flight.Mae space suit is part of the sorority's national traveling Centennial Exhibit.She is an honorary member of Alpha Kappa Alpha,a sonority founded in 1908 at Howard University to address the social issues of the time and promote scholarship  among black women.The Des Monies Register interviewed Mae on October 16,2008 and reported that she mas mixed feelings about the term "role model" "Heres the deal: Everybody's a role model .... Role Models can be good or bad,positive or negative.Mae is a Professor-at-large at Cornell University and was a professor of Environment Studies at Dartmouth College from 1995-2002.She continues to advocate strongly in favor of science education and getting minority students interested in science.She sees science and technology as being very much a part of society,and African-Americans as having been deeply involved in U.S. science and technology from the beginning.She partcipated with First Lady Michelle Obama in a forum for promising girls in the Washington,D.C. public schools in March 2009.