Mae Jemison

Dr. Mae Carol Jemison was born October 17, 1956, in Decatur, Alabama, and raised on Chicago's South Side. She entered Stanford University at 16, graduating in 1977 with degrees in chemical engineering and African and African-American studies, then earned her M.D. from Cornell University Medical College in 1981. Before NASA, she served as a Peace Corps medical officer in Liberia and Sierra Leone (1983–1985).

Selected to NASA's astronaut corps in 1987, Jemison made history on September 12, 1992, when she launched aboard the Space Shuttle Endeavour on mission STS-47 — becoming the first African-American woman, and first woman of color, in space. Over nearly eight days she logged 190 hours in orbit across 127 trips around the Earth, running life-science and materials experiments on the cooperative U.S.–Japan Spacelab-J flight, from bone-cell research to frog-egg development in zero gravity.

After leaving NASA in 1993, Jemison founded The Jemison Group, a technology consulting firm, and later BioSentient Corp. She taught environmental studies at Dartmouth, became a professor-at-large at Cornell, and built The Earth We Share™, an international science-literacy program for young people. Since 2012 she has led the 100 Year Starship — a DARPA/NASA-seeded initiative, won by her Dorothy Jemison Foundation for Excellence, to make human interstellar travel possible within a century.

A cultural icon as well as a scientist, Jemison appeared on Star Trek: The Next Generation (the first real astronaut to do so), authored the memoir Find Where the Wind Goes and a children's science series, and has been inducted into the National Women's Hall of Fame and the International Space Hall of Fame. Schools across the country bear her name. Today she remains one of the most sought-after voices on STEM, exploration, leadership, and human potential — most recently delivering the 2026 Academic Convocation keynote at the Rochester Institute of Technology.