10 Female Scientists of Color You Should Know

Mae Jemison aboard the Spacelab space station, 1992 (Photo via NASA)

Mae Jemison

Mae Jemison was born in 1956, the youngest of three children. Like many of the other women on this list, she rocketed through school and enrolled at Stanford University at the age of 16. Still, despite her accomplishments at such a young age, she still encountered resistance to the idea of women in science.

In an interview with MAKERS, Jemison said that  “At the time of the Apollo airing, everybody was thrilled about space, but I remember being irritated that there were no women astronauts. People tried to explain that to me, and I did not buy it.”

Mae Jemison graduated with degrees in chemical engineering and Afro-American studies. She would then go on to earn her medical degree Cornell University in 1981. Jemison practiced medicine in a Cambodian refugee camp, as well as a Peace Corps volunteer in Sierra Leone and Liberia.

She was working as a general practitioner in Los Angeles (while attending engineering classes!) when NASA accepted her application to the astronaut training program. She had applied after witnessing the work of Sally Ride, the first American women to enter space, believing that the space program had become more open and accepting of diverse applicants.

Before she had even flown into space, the amount of work Jemison had done is enough to make anyone feel like they need to lie down. However, Jemison said that it was far easier to apply to the program, “rather than waiting around in a cornfield, waiting for ET to pick me up or something.”

Jemison completed her training as a mission specialist in 1988. She flew aboard the shuttle Endeavor in September 1992, becoming the first African-American woman in space. In 1993, she resigned from NASA to found her own company, the Jemison Group. The Jemison Group researches and develops technology for use in everyday life.

She was a professor at Dartmouth College from 1995 to 2002, teaching Environmental Science. Today, she is a Professor-At-Large for Cornell University. In 2012, she won the grant for DARPA’s 100 Year Starship project, an effort to give a private foundation the ability to develop long-lasting spaceship designs for interstellar travel.

Next: Flossie Wong-Staal