Hero Mae Jemison

A remarkably accomplished woman of heroic stature is Mae Jemison, who in September 1992 became the first African-American woman to travel into outer space.

Jemison holds a chemical engineering degree from Stanford and the M.D. from Cornell. She spent 1983-1985 working in West Africa with the Peace Corps as a medical officer, after which she located in Los Angeles, where she practiced general medicine.

She reportedly speaks Japanese, Russian and Swahili in addition to her attainments in medicine and engineering, and in the late 1980s, she entered astronaut training with NASA. In 1992, she was a crew member aboard the Shuttle Endeavour.

A year later, she left NASA to found the Jemison Group, an organization that helps provide better healthcare in Africa. She has also taught environmental studies courses at Dartmouth.