A trailblazer, brilliant neuroscientist, and environmental activist
Dr. Roberta Bondar has experienced life's strength, beauty and fragility from heights few people, let alone a handful of women anywhere, have ever scaled. Dr. Roberta Bondar is Canada's first woman astronaut and the world's first neurologist in space (NASA MISSION STS-42, January 1992). Even before her selection to the Canadian Space Program in December 1983, Dr. Bondar was a highly accomplished physician and researcher studying the nervous system.
Dr. Bondar was specifically interested in how eyes and ears help us balance and orient ourselves with respect to our surroundings. Additionally, her research into the effects of low gravity and weightlessness on the brain's blood supply was particularly fitting for NASA's quest to study how spaceflight affects astronauts.