≤PARA δPAR@ ` CTEXT ` 5Jemison, Mae1956╨ astronaut and doctorBorn in Decatur, Alabama, on October 17, 1956, to a maintenance supervisor and a schoolteacher, Mae Jemison moved with her family to Chicago at the age of three. There she was introduced to science by her uncle and developed interests throughout her childhood in anthropology, archaeology, extinct species, evolution, and astronomy. While a student at Morgan Park High School, a visit to a university sparked her interest in biomedical engineering, and after graduating in 1973, she entered Stanford University on a National Achievement Scholarship. There she received degrees in chemical engineering and African-American studies, becoming involved in dance and theater as well. In 1977 Jemison entered medical school at Cornell, where she pursued an interest in international medicine. After volunteering for a summer in a Cambodian refugee camp in Thailand, she studied in Kenya in 1979 on a grant from the International Travelers Institute. She graduated from medical school in 1981 and completed her internship with the Los Angeles County╨USC Medical Center in 1982. After a short time as a general practitioner with a Los Angeles medical group, Jemison became a medical officer with the Peace Corps in West Africa. There she managed health care for Peace Corps and U.S. Embassy personnel and worked in conjunction with the National Institutes of Health and the Center for Disease Control on several research projects, including development of a Hepatitis B vaccine.After returning to work as a physician for a health maintenance organization in Los Angeles, Jemison applied to NASA to be an astronaut. Her attempt to join the space program was aborted by the explosion of the space shuttle Challenger in January 1986, after which NASA temporarily suspended applications. When she reapplied in October 1986, Jemison was one of 15 accepted out of two thousand applicants. Jemison completed her training as a mission specialist with NASA in 1988. She became an astronaut office representative with the Kennedy Space Center at Cape Canaveral, working to process space shuttles for launching and to verify shuttle software. Next, she was assigned to support a cooperative mission between the U.S. and Japan designed to conduct experiments in materials processing and the life sciences. In August 1992, STS-47 Spacelab J became the first successful joint U.S.-Japan space mission.Her maiden space flight came with the week-long September 1992 mission of the shuttle Endeavor. The only African-American woman astronaut (at the time there were 18 other women and 5 black men in the space program), Jemison expressed pride in her own heritage on that mission by taking into space a poster of dancer-choreographer Judith Jamison performing ╥Cry,╙ a dance dedicated to the lives of African-American women. vstyl ` ! ¬ 5¬ 5¬ - !I ┌ 5¬ █ !I ≈ 5¬ ° !I ┌ !I Σ !I æ 5¬ Æ !I Ä 5¬ Å !I σ !I φ !I
