Endeavor Retirement Reminds Us of Mae Jemison
Dear friends of women in science,
I've been having some severe arthritis issues for the last few weeks so I apologize for my disappearance. I should be able to resume posting now.
The space shuttle Endeavor is flying in to Edwards Air Force Base and will be relocated to the Los Angeles based California Science Center tomorrow. The news reminded me that Endeavor was the shuttle on which the first African American woman astronaut had flown: Mae Jemison. Her flight was Sept 12 to 20, 1992, just 20 years ago. A NASA video about that flight is up on You Tube.
Mae Jemison is a person of close to miraculous success in multiple fields. She received her BS from Stanford in Chemical Engineering in 1977. She commented about how hard it was to be a minority woman in engineering classes then, "Some professors would just pretend I wasn't there. I would ask a question and a professor would act as if it was just so dumb, the dumbest question he had ever heard. Then, when a white guy would ask the same question, the professor would say, "That's a very astute observation." That quotation appeared in the New York Times article, "Outnumbered: Standing Out at Work" by Amy Finnerty on July 16, 2000. Jemison went to Stanford at age 16, in itself noteworthy.
Jemison is an accomplished dancer and sees connections between dance and scientific creativity. She has an MD and served in the Peace Corps before joining NASA. She said in an interview with the Des Moines Register that she wasn't driven to become the ground-breaking African American woman astronaut, but she really wanted to go into space. She would have still craved the experience even if many had preceeded her.
In addition to holding some academic positions, Jemison has started up two companies that work at the interface of science and social sciences.
How much did you know about her before?
cheers,
Laura Hoopes
Dear Laura,
I heard Jemison at a PKAL conference many years ago and she blew me away. I'll never forget her. What a brilliant and stimulating woman! You dug up some items I didn't know, though. Dancing and Peace Corps, for example. Wow, inspirational!
Small Science Woman
Hi Laura,
If she went to Stanford at 16, she must be crazy smart. I didn't realize Peace Corps to NASA was a possible career path. Very interesting life!
Randa
Hi Laura,
I had heard of Jemison, but it's been years since I heard anything about her. I had not realized she was an engineer and an MD and a dancer! Wikipedia says she took an Alvin Ailey poster into space. Cool.
LRM
