Portal:Space exploration/Biography/Week 40 2007

Helen Patricia Sharman, (no image available) OBE, (born 30 May 1963), is a British chemist. She was the first Briton in space, visiting the Mir space station aboard Soyuz TM-12 in 1991.

Sharman was born in Sheffield; she is married with a daughter. She received a B.Sc. in chemistry at the University of Sheffield in 1984 and a Ph.D. from Birkbeck, University of London. She worked as an engineer for GEC in London and later as a chemist for Mars Incorporated working with flavourant properties of chocolate.

The Soyuz TM-12 mission, which included Soviet cosmonauts Anatoly Artsebarsky and Sergei Krikalev, launched on 18 May 1991 and lasted eight days, most of that time spent at the Mir space station. Sharman has been wrongly described as "selected by lottery", rather she was subjected to a rigorous selection process that gave weight to scientific, educational, and aerospace backgrounds as well as the ability to learn a foreign language. However, a lottery was one of several schemes used to raise money to underwrite the cost of the flight.

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