Mae Jemison — People — Black-History.com

Mae Jemison trained as a chemical engineer and a physician, served as a Peace Corps medical officer in West Africa, and in September 1992 flew aboard the Space Shuttle Endeavour as the first African American woman in space. After leaving NASA she built a second career in technology consulting, teaching, and science education, arguing that the sciences belong to everyone.

At a Glance

Born: 17 October 1956, Decatur, Alabama
Birth name: Mae Carol Jemison
Known for: Science mission specialist on Space Shuttle Endeavour, STS-47 (1992); Peace Corps medical officer in Sierra Leone and Liberia (1983–1985); founder of The Jemison Group and leader of the 100 Year Starship initiative
Fields: Science · Medicine · Exploration
Era: Letters, Arts & Sciences

Early Life

Mae Carol Jemison was born on 17 October 1956 in Decatur, Alabama, the youngest child of Charlie Jemison, a maintenance supervisor, and Dorothy Jemison, a teacher. When she was about three years old the family moved to Chicago, which she has always considered her hometown. She grew up on the city’s South Side, first in Woodlawn and later in Morgan Park. She has credited an uncle who talked with her about astronomy and relativity with showing her that complex scientific ideas were within her reach, and by her own account she told a kindergarten teacher that she intended to be a scientist.

Jemison graduated from Chicago’s Morgan Park High School in 1973 and entered Stanford University at the age of sixteen on a National Achievement Scholarship. In 1977 she received a bachelor of science degree in chemical engineering and also fulfilled the requirements for a bachelor of arts in African and Afro-American Studies. Alongside her technical studies she kept up an extensive background in dance and a range of interests that NASA’s official biography later listed as including languages (Russian, Swahili, and Japanese), graphic arts, and the collection of African art.

She then attended Cornell University Medical College, receiving her doctor of medicine degree in 1981. As a medical student she studied health conditions in rural Kenya on a travel grant in 1979, joined a student study group to Cuba, and in 1980 worked in a refugee camp in Thailand — early evidence of the international outlook that shaped her later work.

Life and Work

After completing an internship at Los Angeles County/University of Southern California Medical Center in July 1982, Jemison worked briefly as a general practitioner in Los Angeles. From January 1983 through June 1985 she served as the Area Peace Corps Medical Officer for Sierra Leone and Liberia. She managed health care for Peace Corps volunteers and U.S. Embassy personnel, supervised the pharmacy, laboratory, and medical staff, wrote self-care manuals, and took part in research on hepatitis B vaccine, schistosomiasis, and rabies with the National Institutes of Health and the Centers for Disease Control.

Returning to the United States, she joined CIGNA Health Plans of California in October 1985 as a general practitioner while taking graduate engineering classes, and applied to NASA’s astronaut program. She was selected in June 1987 as a member of NASA’s Astronaut Group 12. Her technical assignments before flight included launch support at Kennedy Space Center and verification of Shuttle computer software in the Shuttle Avionics Integration Laboratory.

Jemison flew as science mission specialist on STS-47, Spacelab-J, from 12 to 20 September 1992. The eight-day flight aboard Endeavour was a cooperative mission between the United States and Japan; it completed 127 orbits of Earth and carried 44 Japanese and American life-science and materials-processing experiments. Jemison was a co-investigator on the mission’s bone-cell research experiment and logged 190 hours, 30 minutes, and 23 seconds in space. NASA’s biography describes her as the first woman of color in the world to go into space.

Jemison left NASA in March 1993. That year she founded The Jemison Group, a technology consulting company that has worked on applications such as satellite telecommunications and solar thermal energy for developing countries, and she was named a Montgomery Fellow at Dartmouth College, where she taught environmental studies from 1995 to 2002, including courses on sustainable development and technology design. She was later appointed a professor-at-large at Cornell University. She also founded the Dorothy Jemison Foundation for Excellence, named for her mother, and through it, in 1994, The Earth We Share, an international science camp for students aged twelve to sixteen. In 1999 she established BioSentient Corporation in Houston, a medical-device company developing equipment to monitor the autonomic nervous system.

In 2012 the Dorothy Jemison Foundation won a competitive seed grant from the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency to lead the 100 Year Starship initiative, a project intended to make human travel beyond the solar system possible within a century and to use that goal to drive advances on Earth. She published a memoir for young readers, Find Where the Wind Goes: Moments from My Life, in 2001, and in 1993 appeared in an episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation, the first astronaut to appear in the series.

Legacy

Jemison’s honors include election to the National Women’s Hall of Fame and the National Medical Association Hall of Fame in 1993 and induction into the International Space Hall of Fame in 2004. A Detroit public school, the Mae C. Jemison Academy, was named for her in 1992, and she has received numerous honorary doctorates.

Her significance rests on more than a single first. Jemison entered spaceflight with credentials in engineering, medicine, and public health, and she has used her public standing to argue that scientific literacy, and access to scientific careers, should not be limited by race, sex, or geography. Her career links the Peace Corps clinic, the Shuttle laboratory, and the classroom in one continuous argument about who gets to do science.

For Educators

Jemison’s career links engineering, medicine, public health, and spaceflight, and she has used it to argue that access to science should not be limited by race, sex, or geography. Open the classroom lesson →

Key Dates

17 October 1956 Born in Decatur, Alabama; the family soon moves to Chicago.
1977 Graduates from Stanford University with a degree in chemical engineering.
1981 Receives her M.D. from Cornell University.
January 1983 Begins service as Peace Corps medical officer for Sierra Leone and Liberia.
June 1987 Selected for NASA’s astronaut program.
12 September 1992 Launches aboard Endeavour on STS-47, becoming the first African American woman in space.
March 1993 Leaves NASA and founds The Jemison Group.
1993 Elected to the National Women’s Hall of Fame.
2012 Leads the DARPA-funded 100 Year Starship initiative.

Sources and Further Reading

National Aeronautics and Space Administration, “Mae C. Jemison (M.D.), NASA Astronaut (Former),” Biographical Data, Lyndon B. Johnson Space Center, March 1993. Link
Encyclopedia of Alabama, “Mae Carol Jemison.” Link
National Women’s History Museum, “Mae Jemison.” Link
National Library of Medicine, “Dr. Mae C. Jemison,” Changing the Face of Medicine. Link
Mae Jemison, Find Where the Wind Goes: Moments from My Life (New York: Scholastic, 2001).

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By the Black-History.com editors. Last reviewed 30 September 2026. To suggest a primary source or a correction, write to editors@black-history.com or use our corrections form.