Posted
on October 17, 2013
Today's
birthday girl is a minority of a minority of a minority.
And
a first!
Only
a tiny minority of Americans have ever been to space....between 300 and 400 people. And of those few hundreds of space
travelers, only a small minority have been women...only 45. And of
those women, only a small minority have been black...just
three.
Mae
Jemison was the first African American female astronaut to go to
space, flying on the Space Shuttle Endeavor as a Mission
Specialist in 1992.
I
love this woman! She has been a dancer since age 11, and she learned
everything from jazz and African dance to ballet and modern. She
considered becoming a professional dancer but was also determined to
be a scientist, and maybe a medical doctor—and she decided that
dance was easier to enjoy as a hobby than doctoring!
Jemison
went to prestigious Stanford University at age 16, and she majored in
chemical engineering (although she faced discrimination in the field both as a woman and as a black person). She managed to earn a
Bachelor of Arts Degree (a BA) in African and Afro-American Studies
at the same time that she earned a Bachelor of Science Degree (a BS)
in chemical engineering. She went on to get her Doctor of Medicine
degree at another prestigious university, Cornell; she now has NINE
honorary doctorates in science, engineering, letters, and the arts!!!
Jemison
traveled all over the world to provide medical care to people while
she was in med school!
She studied at the Alvin Ailey dance school!
She worked in the Peace Corps!
She took a
poster from the Alvin Ailey Professional Dance Company on her space mission!
When she left NASA, she founded her
own company to research how technology can help the daily lives of the peoples of the
world!
She has a dance studio in her house!
And, best of all, she
acted in an episode of Star Trek: the Next Generation!
Okay,
that Star Trek thing WASN'T best of all—I was just joking.
The medical and helping people stuff, the astronaut and
scientist stuff are all way more important than her foray into
acting. But it was perhaps the most surprising thing I read about the
wonderfully interesting Mae Jemison!
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