Michael Shermer Personal life
When was he born?
When was Michael Shermer born?
As of 2007, Shermer lives in Altadena, California. He married Jennifer Graf, a native of Koln, Germany, on June 25, 2014. The ceremony was performed by Shermer's sister, Tina, who was ordained online for the occasion. Politically, Shermer has described himself as a lifelong libertarian. In a 2015 interview, Shermer stated that he prefers to talk about individual issues, lamenting that, in the past, people would refuse to even listen to him because of his self-description as a libertarian. In this same interview, he also mentioned that his research into gun control lead him to believe that some measures to reduce gun-related violence would be beneficial. The first president he voted for was Richard Nixon in 1972, which, in light of the Watergate scandal, he calls his "most embarrassing vote". In 2000, he voted for Harry Browne to "vote his conscience", on the assumption that the winner of the Al Gore - George W. Bush contest would be irrelevant. He later regretted this decision, believing that Bush's foreign policy made the world more dangerous, and he voted for John Kerry in 2004. Shermer has named Thomas Jefferson as his favorite president, for his championing of liberty and his application of scientific thinking to the political, economic, and social spheres. He says of Jefferson, "When he dined alone at the White House there was more intelligence in that room than when John F. Kennedy hosted a dinner there for a roomful of Nobel laureates." Shermer once opposed most gun control measures, primarily because of his beliefs in the principle of increasing individual freedom and decreased government intervention, and also because he has owned guns for most of his life. As an adult, he owned a .357 Magnum pistol for a quarter of a century for protection, although he eventually took it out of the house, and then got rid of it entirely. Though he no longer owns guns, he continues to support the right to own guns to protect one's family. However, by 2013, the data on gun homicides, suicides, and accidental shootings convinced him that some modest gun control measures might be necessary. Shermer also previously favored capital punishment, primarily in sympathy for victims' families, but later he came to oppose the death penalty, partially out of a resistance to giving the government too much power - in light of the hundreds of executed individuals who were later revealed to be innocent - and partially from his view that retributive justice is driven by humanity's baser instincts, and it does not effect restorative justice. He later changed his mind about the issue during research for The Moral Arc, reasoning that "[Capital punishment] is one of these barbaric practices that we need to get rid of. [The United States of] America is really the last of the 19 industrialized democracies to have the death penalty. (...) The Italian enlightenment philosopher Cesare Beccaria, on his book On Crimes and Punishments, put forward the idea that the punishment should fit the crime and that the criteria should be whether it keeps people from committing crimes, and the Death Penalty does not do that." CANNOTANSWER
CANNOTANSWER
Michael Brant Shermer (born September 8, 1954) is an American science writer, historian of science, executive director of The Skeptics Society, and founding publisher of Skeptic magazine, a publication focused on investigating pseudoscientific and supernatural claims. The author of over a dozen books, Shermer is known for engaging in debates on pseudoscience and religion in which he emphasizes scientific skepticism.

Shermer was the co-producer and co-host of Exploring the Unknown, a 13-hour Fox Family television series broadcast in 1999. From April 2001 to January 2019, he contributed a monthly Skeptic column to Scientific American magazine.

Once a fundamentalist Christian, Shermer ceased to believe in the existence of God during graduate school. He accepts the labels agnostic, nontheist, atheist but prefers to be called a skeptic. He also describes himself as an advocate for humanist philosophy as well as the science of morality.

Early life and education
Michael Brant Shermer was born on September 8, 1954 in Los Angeles. He is partly of Greek and German ancestry. Shermer was raised in Southern California, primarily in the La Cañada Flintridge area. His parents divorced when he was four and later remarried.  He has a step-sister, two step-brothers, and two half-sisters. Shermer accompanied his stepfather on hunting excursions several times a year, pursuing game such as doves, ducks, and quail for food.

Although Shermer went to Sunday school, he said that neither his biological parents, stepparents nor siblings were religious nor non-religious, as they did not discuss that topic often, nor did they attend church or pray together. He began his senior year of high school in 1971, when the evangelical movement in the United States was growing in popularity. At the behest of a friend, Shermer embraced Christianity. He attended the Glendale, Presbyterian Church and observed a sermon delivered by "a very dynamic and histrionic preacher who inspired me to come forward at the end of the sermon to be saved." For seven years Shermer evangelized door-to-door.

Shermer attended an informal Christian study fellowship group at "The Barn" in La Crescenta, California, which he described as "a quintessential 1970s-era hang-out with a long-haired hippie-type, guitar-playing leader who read Bible passages that we discussed at length." He enjoyed the social aspects of religion, in particular the theological debates.

Shermer graduated from Crescenta Valley High School in 1972. He enrolled at Pepperdine University with the intent of pursuing Christian theology. In addition to taking Bible courses, he studied the writings of C.S. Lewis. Despite school restrictions, such as a ban on dancing and visiting the dorm rooms of opposite sex, he accepted the university’s teachings as a valid guide for behavior. When he learned that doctoral studies in theology required proficiency in Hebrew, Greek, Latin, and Aramaic, he changed his major to psychology. He completed his BA in psychology at Pepperdine in 1976.

Shermer went on to study experimental psychology at California State University, Fullerton. Discussions with his professors, along with studies in the natural and social sciences, led him to question his religious beliefs. Fueled by what he perceived to be the intolerance generated by the absolute morality taught in his religious studies; the hypocrisy in what many believers preached and what they practiced; and a growing awareness of other religious beliefs that were determined by the temporal, geographic, and cultural circumstances in which their adherents were born, he abandoned his religious views. Halfway through graduate school, he stopped wearing his Christian silver ichthys medallion. 

Shermer attributed the paralysis of his college girlfriend as a key point when he lost faith. After she was in an automobile accident that broke her back and rendered her paralyzed from the waist down, Shermer relayed, "If anyone deserved to be healed it was her, and nothing happened, so I just thought there was probably no God at all."

Shermer earned an MA degree in psychology from California State University Fullerton in 1978.

Career

Cycling 
After earning his MA in experimental psychology in 1978, Shermer worked as a writer for a bicycle magazine in Irvine, California. He took up bicycle racing after his first assignment, a Cycles Peugeot press conference,  He completed a century ride (100 miles) and started to ride hundreds of miles a week.

Shermer began competitive cycling in 1979 and rode professionally for ten years, primarily in long distance ultramarathon road racing. He is a founding member of the Ultra Cycling Hall of Fame.

Shermer worked with cycling technologists in developing better products for the sport. During his association with Bell Helmets, a bicycle-race sponsor, he advised them on design issues regarding expanded-polystyrene for use in cycling helmets, which would absorb greater impact than the old leather "hairnet" helmets used by bicyclists for decades. Shermer advised them that if their helmets looked too much like motorcycle helmets, in which polystyrene was already being used, and not like the old hairnet helmets, no serious cyclists or amateur would use them. This suggestion led to their model, the V1 Pro, which looked like a black leather hairnet, but functioned on the inside like a motorcycle helmet. In 1982, he worked with Wayman Spence, whose small supply company, Spenco Medical, adapted the gel technology Spence developed for bedridden patients with pressure sores into cycling gloves and saddles to alleviate the carpal tunnel syndrome and saddle sores suffered by cyclists.

While a long distance racer, he helped to found the 3,000-mile nonstop transcontinental bicycle Race Across America (known as "RAAM", along with Lon Haldeman and John Marino), in which he competed five times (1982, 1983, 1984, 1985, and 1989), was an assistant race director for six years, and the executive race director for seven years. An acute medical condition is named for him: "Shermer Neck" is pain in and extreme weakness of the neck muscles found among long-distance bicyclists. Shermer suffered the condition about 2,000 miles into the 1983 Race Across America. Shermer's embrace of scientific skepticism crystallized during his time as a cyclist, explaining, "I became a skeptic on Saturday, August 6, 1983, on the long climbing road to Loveland Pass, Colorado", after months of training under the guidance of a "nutritionist" with an unaccredited PhD. After years of practicing acupuncture, chiropractic, massage therapy, negative ions, rolfing, pyramid power, and fundamentalist Christianity to improve his life and training, Shermer stopped rationalizing the failure of these practices.

Shermer participated in the Furnace Creek 508 in October 2011, a qualifying race for RAAM, finishing second in the four man team category.

Shermer has written on the subject of pervasive doping in competitive cycling and a game theoretic view of the dynamics driving the problem in several sports. He covered r-EPO doping and described it as widespread and well known within the sport, which was later shown to be instrumental in the doping scandal surrounding Lance Armstrong in 2010.

Teaching
While cycling, Shermer taught Psychology 101 during the evenings at Glendale Community College, a two-year college. Wanting to teach at a four-year university, he decided to earn his PhD. He lost interest in psychology and switched to studying the history of science, earning his PhD at Claremont Graduate University in 1991. His dissertation was titled Heretic-Scientist: Alfred Russel Wallace and the Evolution of Man: A Study on the Nature of Historical Change.

Shermer then became an adjunct professor of the history of science at Occidental College, California. In 2007, Shermer became a senior research fellow at Claremont Graduate University. In 2011, he worked as an adjunct professor at Chapman University, and was later made a Presidential Fellow. At Chapman, he taught a yearly critical thinking course called Skepticism 101.

Skeptics Society
In 1991, Shermer and Pat Linse co-founded the Skeptics Society in Los Angeles with the assistance of Kim Ziel Shermer. The Skeptics Society is a non-profit  organization that promotes scientific skepticism and seeks to debunk pseudoscience and irrational beliefs. It started off as a garage hobby but eventually grew into a full-time occupation. The Skeptics Society publishes the magazine Skeptic, organizes the Caltech Lecture Series, and as of 2017, it had over 50,000 members.

Shermer is listed as one of the scientific advisors for the American Council on Science and Health (ACSH).

Published works
Shermer’s early writing covered cycling, followed by math and science education for children which included several collaborations with Arthur Benjamin. 

From April 2001 to January 2019, he wrote the monthly Skeptic column for Scientific American. He has also contributed to Time magazine.

He is the author of a series of books that attempt to explain the ubiquity of irrational or poorly substantiated beliefs, including UFOs, Bigfoot, and paranormal claims. Writing in Why People Believe Weird Things: Pseudoscience, Superstition, and Other Confusions of Our Time (1997),  Shermer refers to "patternicity", his term for pareidolia and apophenia or the willing suspension of disbelief. He writes in the Introduction:So we are left with the legacy of two types of thinking errors: Type 1 Error: believing a falsehood and Type 2 Error: rejecting a truth. ... Believers in UFOs, alien abductions, ESP, and psychic phenomena have committed a Type 1 Error in thinking: they are believing a falsehood. ... It's not that these folks are ignorant or uninformed; they are intelligent but misinformed. Their thinking has gone wrong.In How We Believe: The Search for God in an Age of Science (2000), Shermer explored the psychology behind the belief in God.

In February 2002, he characterized the position that "God had no part in the process [of the evolution of mankind]" as the "standard scientific theory". This statement was criticized in January 2006 by the scientist Eugenie Scott, who commented that science makes no claim about God one way or the other.

Shermer's book In Darwin's Shadow: The Life and Science of Alfred Russel Wallace: A Biographical Study on the Psychology of History (2002) was based on his dissertation.

In his book The Borderlands of Science, (2001) Shermer rated several noted scientists for gullibility toward "pseudo" or "borderland" ideas, using a rating version, developed by psychologist Frank Sulloway, of the Big Five model of personality. Shermer rated Wallace extremely high (99th percentile) on agreeableness/accommodation and argued that this was the key trait in distinguishing Wallace from scientists who give less credence to fringe ideas.

In May 2002, Shermer and Alex Grobman published their book Denying History: Who Says the Holocaust Never Happened and Why Do They Say It?, which examined and refuted the Holocaust denial movement. This book recounts meeting various denialists and concludes that free speech is the best way to deal with pseudohistory.

Science Friction: Where the Known Meets the Unknown was released in 2005. 

His 2006 book Why Darwin Matters: The Case Against Intelligent Design marshals point-by-point arguments supporting evolution, sharply criticizing intelligent design. This book also argues that science cannot invalidate religion, and that Christians and conservatives can and should accept evolution.

In The Mind of The Market: Compassionate Apes, Competitive Humans, and Other Tales from Evolutionary Economics (2007), Shermer reported on the findings of multiple behavioral and biochemical studies that address evolutionary explanations for modern behavior. It garnered several critical reviews from academics, with skeptic Robert T. Carroll saying: "He has been blinded by his libertarianism and seduced by the allure of evolutionary psychology to explain everything, including ethics and economics."

In May 2011, Shermer published The Believing Brain: From Ghosts and Gods to Politics and Conspiracies: How We Construct Beliefs and Reinforce Them as Truths. In a review for Commonweal, writer Joseph Bottum described Shermer as more of a popularizer of science and stated, "science emerges from The Believing Brain as a full-blown ideology, lifted out of its proper realm and applied to all the puzzles of the world."

In January 2015, Shermer published The Moral Arc: How Science and Reason Lead Humanity Toward Truth, Justice, and Freedom.

Writing for Society in 2017, Eugene Goodheart noted that Shermer identified skepticism with scientism and observed that in his book Skeptic: Viewing the World with a Skeptical Eye (2016) Shermer was a "vivid and lucid" writer who imported his "political convictions into his advocacy of evolutionary theory, compromising his objectivity as a defender of science."

Harriet Hall says of Shermer's 2018 publication, Heavens on Earth: The Scientific Search for the Afterlife, Immortality, and Utopia, that "the topics of Heavens on Earth are usually relegated to the spheres of philosophy and religion, but Shermer approaches them through science, looking for evidence -- or lack thereof." She goes on to say that "[s]ome will argue that Shermer goes beyond the science" but that "it will definitely ... make the reader think."

In 2020, Shermer published Giving the Devil His Due, a series of 30 reflections on essays that he had published the previous 15 years.

Media appearances and lectures

Shermer appeared as a guest on Donahue in 1994 to respond to Bradley Smith's and David Cole's Holocaust denial claims, and in 1995 on The Oprah Winfrey Show to challenge Rosemary Altea's psychic claims. 

In 1994 and 1995, Shermer made several appearances on NBC's daytime paranormal-themed show The Other Side.  He proposed a skepticism-oriented reality show to the producers but it did it move forward. Several years later Fox Family Channel, picked up the series. In 1999, Shermer co-produced and co-hosted the Fox Family TV series Exploring the Unknown. Budgeted at approximately $200,000 per episode, the series was viewed by Shermer as a direct extension of the work done at the Skeptics Society and Skeptic magazine,  with a neutral title chosen to broaden viewership.

Shermer made a guest appearance in a 2004 episode of Penn & Teller's Bullshit!, in which he argued that events in the Bible constitute "mythic storytelling", rather than events described literally. His stance was supported by the show's hosts, who have expressed their own atheism. The episode in question, The Bible: Fact or Fiction?, sought to debunk the notion that the Bible is an empirically reliable historical record. Opposing Shermer was Paul Maier, professor of ancient history at Western Michigan University.

Shermer presented at the three Beyond Belief events from 2006 to 2008. He has presented at several TED conferences with "Why people believe strange things" in 2006,  "The pattern behind self-deception" in 2010, and "Reasonable Doubt" in 2015.

Shermer has debated Deepak Chopra several times, including on the ABC News program Nightline in March 2010.

In 2012, Shermer was one of three guest speakers at the first Reason Rally in Washington, DC, an event attended by thousands of atheists, where he gave a talk titled "The Moral Arc of Reason." That same year, Shermer participated in an Intelligence Squared debate titled "Science Refutes God" paired with Lawrence Krauss, and opposing Dinesh D'Souza and Ian Hutchinson.

He is also an occasional guest on Skepticality, the official podcast of Skeptic.

Shermer appeared in the 2014 documentary Merchants of Doubt.

Allegations of sexual harassment 
In 2018, Kimberly Winston reported in the Washington Post that Shermer had "denied allegations of sexual harassment and assault from several women." In 2019 NPR reported that although he was not charged for any wrongdoing, Illinois Wesleyan University had canceled author Shermer’s visit for the President’s Convocation at that institution after it discovered that sexual assault allegations had been made against Shermer. Writing for The Guardian in 2020, Fara Dabhoiwala stated that several of Shermer's public speaking engagements had been canceled as a result of the allegations of sexual harassment and assault from women, allegations that Shermer has denied. Undark Magazine reported that the allegations against Shermer began to emerge in 2013 and 2014. The magazine also reported that Shermer had sent cease and desist letters to the student-run newspaper of Santa Barbara City College and accused the editor of defamation in an email to the college.

Personal life

Shermer married Jennifer Graf, a native of Cologne, Germany, on June 25, 2014. The ceremony was performed by Shermer's sister, Tina, who was ordained online for the occasion. 

As of 2007, Shermer lived in Altadena, California.  but no longer resided there by 2021.

Political positions
Politically, Shermer has described himself as a lifelong libertarian. In a 2015 interview, Shermer stated that he prefers to talk about individual issues, lamenting that, in the past, people would refuse to even listen to him because of his self-description as a libertarian. In this same interview, he also mentioned that his research into gun control led him to believe that some measures to reduce gun-related violence would be beneficial. The first president he voted for was Richard Nixon in 1972, which, in light of the Watergate scandal, he calls his "most embarrassing vote".

In 2000, he voted for Harry Browne to "vote his conscience", on the assumption that the winner of the Al Gore – George W. Bush contest would be irrelevant. He later regretted this decision, believing that Bush's foreign policy made the world more dangerous, and he voted for John Kerry in 2004. Shermer has named Thomas Jefferson as his favorite president, for his championing of liberty and his application of scientific thinking to the political, economic, and social spheres. He says of Jefferson, "When he dined alone at the White House there was more intelligence in that room than when John F. Kennedy hosted a dinner there for a roomful of Nobel laureates."

In June 2006, Shermer, who formerly expressed skepticism regarding the mainstream scientific views on global warming, wrote in Scientific American magazine that, in the light of the accumulation of evidence, the position of denying global warming is no longer tenable.

Gun control
Shermer once opposed most gun control measures, primarily because of his beliefs in the principles of increasing individual freedom and decreasing government intervention, and also because he has owned guns for most of his life. As an adult, he owned a .357 Magnum pistol for a quarter of a century for protection, although he eventually took it out of the house, and then got rid of it entirely. Though he no longer owns guns, he continues to support the right to own guns to protect one's family. However, by 2013, the data on gun homicides, suicides, and accidental shootings convinced him that some modest gun control measures might be necessary.

Capital punishment
Shermer also previously favored capital punishment, primarily in sympathy for victims' families, but later he came to oppose the death penalty, partially out of a resistance to giving the government too much power – in light of the hundreds of executed individuals who were later revealed to be innocent – and partially from his view that retributive justice is driven by humanity's baser instincts, and it does not effect restorative justice. He changed his mind about the issue during research for The Moral Arc, reasoning that "[Capital punishment] is one of these barbaric practices that we need to get rid of. [The United States of] America is really the last of the 19 industrialized democracies to have the death penalty. (...) The Italian enlightenment philosopher Cesare Beccaria, in his book On Crimes and Punishments, put forward the idea that the punishment should fit the crime and that the criteria should be whether it keeps people from committing crimes, and the Death Penalty does not do that."

Awards and honors
 Fellow, 2001, Linnean Society of London
 California State University, Fullerton Distinguished Alumni Award, 2002
 NCAS Philip J. Klass Award, October 2006
 Honorary Doctorate of Humane Letters, Whittier College, 2008
Independent Investigations Group, 10th Anniversary Gala award, 2010

Bibliography

Media work and appearances

Television
Exploring the Unknown (1999)

 "Michael Shermer and Out of Body Experiences"
 "Michael Shermer on How to Fake UFO Photographs"
 "Michael Shermer on Spoonbending"
 "Michael Shermer Firewalking Across Hot Coals"
 "Michael Shermer Tests the Polygraph and Lie Detection", Parts 1 & 2
 "Michael Shermer Learns the Art of Con Games", Parts 1 & 2
 "Michael Shermer Decodes the Bible Code"
 "Michael Shermer Explores Graphology/Handwriting Analysis", Parts 1 & 2
 "Michael Shermer Remote Viewing Experiment", Parts 1 & 2

Other television and film appearances

 August 1983 news segment on Shermer bicycling in Race Across America
 Unsolved Mysteries, James Van Praagh segment, 1994
 The Phil Donahue Show, 1994
 Charlie Rose, April 1996
 "The Power of Belief", ABC News, 1998
 Politically Incorrect, December 22, 2000
 20/20, December 5, 2003
 Dennis Miller, May 19 and May 20, 2004
 "The Bible: Fact or Fiction?", Penn & Teller: Bullshit!, 2004
 The Question of God: Sigmund Freud & C.S. Lewis, 2004
 The Eyes of Nye on "Pseudoscience", 2005
 The Skeptic's Guide to the Universe, October 4, 2006
 "Doomsday 2012", Decoding the Past, 2007
 Larry King Live, July 13, 2007 and January 24, 2008
 Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed, 2008
 "Does God Have a Future?", Nightline, ABC, March 23, 2010
 "What Were You Thinking?", Dateline NBC, April 25, 2010
 "Did You See That?", Dateline NBC, July 16, 2010
 The Colbert Report, August 21, 2007
 The Colbert Report, July 11, 2011
 Paranormal Challenge, Linda Vista Hospital, August 26, 2011
 Conspiracy Road Trip: UFOs, BBC Three, 15 October 2012
 Stossel, Fox Business Channel, December 13, 2012
 The Agenda with Steve Paikin Feb 28, 2013 "The Anti-Science Left"
 StarTalk, National Geographic Channel, November 15, 2015

Radio and Web appearances

 Coast to Coast AM, September 1, 2007 and May 21, 2011
 Mr. Deity and the Skeptic. YouTube. September 15, 2009
 Mr. Deity and the Believing Brain. YouTube. August 3, 2011
 The Rubin Report, January 22, 2016
 The Joe Rogan Experience, March 7, 2016, September 14, 2016, May 16, 2017, January 24, 2018, January 10, 2019

References

External links

 
 
 
 

1954 births
Living people
American agnostics
American former Christians
American former Protestants
American humanists
Secular humanists
American libertarians
American science writers
American skeptics
American atheism activists
American atheist writers
California State University, Fullerton alumni
Claremont Graduate University faculty
Critics of alternative medicine
Critics of creationism
Critics of parapsychology
Cycling writers
Former Christian creationists
Materialists
People from Altadena, California
Pepperdine University alumni
Science activists
Science communicators
Scientific American people
Writers from Glendale, California
People from La Crescenta-Montrose, California
21st-century American historians
21st-century American male writers
Historians of science
20th-century atheists
21st-century atheists
Ultra-distance cyclists
Writers about religion and science
Historians from California
American male non-fiction writers
Since the first human spaceflight by the Soviet Union, citizens of 42 countries have flown in space. For each nationality, the launch date of the first mission is listed. The list is based on the nationality of the person at the time of the launch. Only 3 of the 42 "first flyers" have been women (Helen Sharman for the United Kingdom in 1991, Anousheh Ansari for Iran in 2006, and Yi So-yeon for South Korea in 2008). Only three nations (Soviet Union/Russia, U.S., China) have launched their own crewed spacecraft, with the Soviets/Russians and the American programs providing rides to other nations' astronauts. Twenty-seven "first flights" occurred on Soviet or Russian flights while the United States carried fourteen.

Timeline
Note: All dates given are UTC. Countries indicated in bold have achieved independent human spaceflight capability.

Notes

Other claims
The above list uses the nationality at the time of launch. Lists with differing criteria might include the following people:
 Pavel Popovich, first launched 12 August 1962, was the first Ukrainian-born man in space.  At the time, Ukraine was a part of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics.
 Michael Collins, first launched 18 July 1966 was born in Italy to American parents and was an American citizen when he went into space.
 William Anders, American citizen, first launched 21 December 1968, was the first Hong Kong-born man in space.
 Vladimir Shatalov, first launched 14 January 1969, was the first Kazakh-born man in space. At the time, Kazakhstan was a part of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics.
 Bill Pogue, first launched 16 November 1973, as an inductee to the 5 Civilized Tribes Hall of Fame can lay claim to being the first Native American in space.  See John Herrington below regarding technicality of tribal registration.
 Pyotr Klimuk, first launched 18 December 1973, was the first Belorussian-born man in space. At the time, Belarus was a part of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics.
 Vladimir Dzhanibekov, first launched 16 March 1978, was the first Uzbek-born man in space. At the time, Uzbekistan was a part of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics.
 Paul D. Scully-Power, first launched 5 October 1984, was born in Australia, but was an American citizen when he went into space; Australian law at the time forbade dual-citizenship.
 Taylor Gun-Jin Wang, first launched 29 April 1985, was born in China to Chinese parents, but was an American citizen when he went into space.
 Lodewijk van den Berg, launched 29 April 1985, was born in the Netherlands, but was an American citizen when he went into space.
 Patrick Baudry, first launched 17 June 1985, was born in French Cameroun (now part of Cameroon), but was a French citizen when he went into space.
 Shannon Lucid, first launched 17 June 1985, was born in China to American parents of European descent, and was an American citizen when she went into space.
 Franklin Chang-Diaz, first launched 12 January 1986, was born in Costa Rica, but was an American citizen when he went into space
 Musa Manarov, first launched 21 December 1987, was the first Azerbaijan-born man in space. At the time, Azerbaijan was a part of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics.
 Anatoly Solovyev, first launched 7 June 1988, was the first Latvian-born man in space. At the time, Latvia was a part of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics.
 Sergei Konstantinovich Krikalev and Aleksandr Aleksandrovich Volkov became Russian rather than Soviet citizens while still in orbit aboard Mir, making them the first purely Russian citizens in space.
 James H. Newman, American citizen, first launched 12 September 1993, was born in the portion of the United Nations Trust Territory of the Pacific Islands that is now the Federated States of Micronesia.
 Talgat Musabayev, first launched 1 July 1994, was born in the Kazakh SSR and is known in Kazakhstan as the "first cosmonaut of independent Kazakhstan", but was a Russian citizen when he went into space.
 Frederick W. Leslie, American citizen, launched 20 October 1995, was born in Panama Canal Zone (now Panama).
 Andy Thomas, first launched 19 May 1996, was born in Australia but like Paul D. Scully-Power was an American citizen when he went to space; Australian law at the time forbade dual-citizenship.
 Carlos I. Noriega, first launched 15 May 1997, was born in Peru, but was an American citizen when he went into space.
 Bjarni Tryggvason, launched 7 August 1997, was born in Iceland, but was a Canadian citizen when he went into space.
 Salizhan Sharipov, first launched 22 January 1998, was born in Kyrgyzstan (then the Kirghiz SSR), but was a Russian citizen when he went into space. Sharipov is of Uzbek ancestry.
 Philippe Perrin, first launched 5 June 2002, was born in Morocco, but was a French citizen when he went into space.
 John Herrington, an American citizen first launched 24 November 2002, is the first tribal registered Native American in space (Chickasaw).  See also Bill Pogue above.
 Fyodor Yurchikhin, first launched 7 October 2002, was born in Georgia (then the Georgian SSR). He was a Russian citizen at the time he went into space and is of Pontian Greek descent.
 Joseph M. Acaba, first launched 15 March 2009, was born in the U.S. state of California to American parents of Puerto Rican descent.

Gallery

References

External links
Current Space Demographics, compiled by William Harwood, CBS News Space Consultant, and Rob Navias, NASA.

Lists of firsts in space
Spaceflight timelines This is a list of notable books by young authors and of books written by notable writers in their early years. These books were written, or substantially completed, before the author's twentieth birthday. 

Alexandra Adornetto (born 18 April 1994) wrote her debut novel, The Shadow Thief, when she was 13. It was published in 2007. Other books written by her as a teenager are: The Lampo Circus (2008), Von Gobstopper's Arcade (2009), Halo (2010) and Hades (2011).
Margery Allingham (1904–1966) had her first novel, Blackkerchief Dick, about smugglers in 17th century Essex, published in 1923, when she was 19.
Jorge Amado (1912–2001) had his debut novel, The Country of Carnival, published in 1931, when he was 18.
Prateek Arora wrote his debut novel Village 1104 at the age of 16. It was published in 2010.
Daisy Ashford (1881–1972) wrote The Young Visiters while aged nine. This novella was first published in 1919, preserving her juvenile punctuation and spelling. An earlier work, The Life of Father McSwiney, was dictated to her father when she was four. It was published almost a century later in 1983.
Amelia Atwater-Rhodes (born 1984) had her first novel, In the Forests of the Night, published in 1999. Subsequent novels include Demon in My View (2000), Shattered Mirror (2001), Midnight Predator (2002), Hawksong (2003) and Snakecharm (2004).
Jane Austen (1775–1817) wrote Lady Susan, a short epistolary novel, between 1793 and 1795 when she was aged 18-20.
Ruskin Bond (born 1934) wrote his semi-autobiographical novel The Room on the Roof when he was 17. It was published in 1955.
Marjorie Bowen (1885–1952) wrote the historical novel The Viper of Milan when she was 16. Published in 1906 after several rejections, it became a bestseller.
Oliver Madox Brown (1855–1874) finished his novel Gabriel Denver in early 1872, when he was 17. It was published the following year.
Pamela Brown (1924–1989) finished her children's novel about an amateur theatre company, The Swish of the Curtain (1941), when she was 16 and later wrote other books about the stage.
Celeste and Carmel Buckingham wrote The Lost Princess when they were 11 and 9.
Flavia Bujor (born 8 August 1988) wrote The Prophecy of the Stones (2002) when she was 13.
Lord Byron (1788–1824) published two volumes of poetry in his teens, Fugitive Pieces and Hours of Idleness.
Taylor Caldwell's The Romance of Atlantis was written when she was 12.
 (1956–1976), Le Don de Vorace, was published in 1974.
Hilda Conkling (1910–1986) had her poems published in Poems by a Little Girl (1920), Shoes of the Wind (1922) and Silverhorn (1924).
Abraham Cowley (1618–1667), Tragicall History of Piramus and Thisbe (1628), Poetical Blossoms (published 1633).
Maureen Daly (1921–2006) completed Seventeenth Summer before she was 20. It was published in 1942.
Juliette Davies (born 2000) wrote the first book in the JJ Halo series when she was eight years old. The series was published the following year.
Samuel R. Delany (born 1 April 1942) published his The Jewels of Aptor in 1962.
Patricia Finney's A Shadow of Gulls was published in 1977 when she was 18. Its sequel, The Crow Goddess, was published in 1978.
Barbara Newhall Follett (1914–1939) wrote her first novel The House Without Windows at the age of eight. The manuscript was destroyed in a house fire and she later retyped her manuscript at the age of 12. The novel was published by Knopf publishing house in January 1927.
Ford Madox Ford (né Hueffer) (1873–1939) published in 1892 two children's stories,  The Brown Owl and The Feather, and a novel, The Shifting of the Fire.
Anne Frank (1929–1945) wrote her diary for two-and-a-half years starting on her 13th birthday. It was published posthumously as Het Achterhuis in 1947 and then in English translation in 1952 as Anne Frank: The Diary of a Young Girl. An unabridged translation followed in 1996.
Miles Franklin wrote My Brilliant Career (1901) when she was a teenager.
Alec Greven's How to Talk to Girls was published in 2008 when he was nine years old. Subsequently he has published How to Talk to Moms, How to Talk to Dads and How to Talk to Santa.
Faïza Guène (born 1985) had  Kiffe kiffe demain published in 2004, when she was 19. It has since been translated into 22 languages, including English (as Kiffe Kiffe Tomorrow).
Sonya Hartnett (born 1968) was thirteen years old when she wrote her first novel, Trouble All the Way, which was published in Australia in 1984.
Alex and Brett Harris wrote the best-selling book Do Hard Things (2008), a non-fiction book challenging teenagers to "rebel against low expectations", at age 19. Two years later came a follow-up book called Start Here (2010).
Georgette Heyer (1902–1974) wrote The Black Moth when she was 17 and received a publishing contract when she was 18. It was published just after she turned 19.
Susan Hill (born 1942), The Enclosure, published in 1961.
S. E. Hinton (born 1948), The Outsiders, first published in 1967.
Palle Huld (1912–2010) wrote A Boy Scout Around the World (Jorden Rundt i 44 dage) when he was 15, following a sponsored journey around the world.
George Vernon Hudson (1867–1946) completed An Elementary Manual of New Zealand Entomology at the end of 1886, when he was 19, but not published until 1892.
Katharine Hull (1921–1977) and Pamela Whitlock (1920–1982) wrote the children's outdoor adventure novel The Far-Distant Oxus in 1937. It was followed in 1938 by Escape to Persia and in 1939 by Oxus in Summer.
Leigh Hunt (1784–1859) published Juvenilia; or, a Collection of Poems Written between the ages of Twelve and Sixteen by J. H. L. Hunt, Late of the Grammar School of Christ's Hospital in March 1801.
Kody Keplinger  (born 1991) wrote her debut novel The DUFF when she was 17.
Gordon Korman (born 1963), This Can't Be Happening at Macdonald Hall (1978), three sequels, and I Want to Go Home (1981).
Matthew Gregory Lewis (1775–1818) wrote the Gothic novel The Monk, now regarded as a classic of the genre, before he was twenty. It was published in 1796.
Nina Lugovskaya (1918–1993), a painter, theater director and Gulag survivor, kept a diary in 1932–37, which shows strong social sensitivities. It was found in the Russian State Archives and published 2003. It appeared in English in the same year.
Joyce Maynard (born 1953) completed Looking Back while she was 19. It was first published in 1973.
Margaret Mitchell (1900–1949) wrote her novella Lost Laysen at the age of fifteen and gave the two notebooks containing the manuscript to her boyfriend, Henry Love Angel. The novel was published posthumously in 1996.
Ben Okri, the Nigerian poet and novelist,  (born 1959) wrote his first book Flowers and Shadows while he was 19.
Alice Oseman(born 1994) wrote the novel Solitaire  when she was 17 and it was published in 2014.
Helen Oyeyemi (born 1984) completed The Icarus Girl while still 18. First published in 2005.
Christopher Paolini (born 1983) had Eragon, the first novel of the Inheritance Cycle, first published 2002.
Emily Pepys (1833–1877), daughter of a bishop, wrote a vivid private journal over six months of 1844–45, aged ten. It was discovered much later and published in 1984.
Anya Reiss (born 1991) wrote her play Spur of the Moment when she was 17. It was both performed and published in 2010, when she was 18.
Arthur Rimbaud (1854–1891) wrote almost all his prose and poetry while still a teenager, for example Le Soleil était encore chaud (1866), Le Bateau ivre (1871) and Une Saison en Enfer (1873).
John Thomas Romney Robinson (1792–1882) saw his juvenile poems published in 1806, when he was 13.
Françoise Sagan (1935–2004) had Bonjour tristesse published in 1954, when she was 18.
Mary Shelley (1797–1851) completed Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus during May 1817, when she was 19. It was first published in the following year.
Mattie Stepanek (1990–2004), an American poet, published seven best-selling books of poetry.
John Steptoe (1950–1989), author and illustrator, began his picture book Stevie at 16. It was published in 1969 in Life.
Anna Stothard (born 1983) saw her Isabel and Rocco published when she was 19.
Dorothy Straight (born 1958) in 1962 wrote How the World Began, which was published by Pantheon Books in 1964. She holds the Guinness world record for the youngest female published author.
Jalaluddin Al-Suyuti (c. 1445–1505) wrote his first book, Sharh Al-Isti'aadha wal-Basmalah, at the age of 17.
F. J. Thwaites (1908–1979) wrote his bestselling novel The Broken Melody when he was 19.
John Kennedy Toole (1937–1969) wrote The Neon Bible in 1954 when he was 16. It was not published until 1989.
Alec Waugh (1898–1981) wrote his novel about school life, The Loom of Youth, after leaving school. It was published in 1917.
Catherine Webb (born 1986) had five young adult books published before she was 20: Mirror Dreams (2002), Mirror Wakes (2003), Waywalkers (2003), Timekeepers (2004) and The Extraordinary and Unusual Adventures of Horatio Lyle (February 2006).
Nancy Yi Fan (born 1993) published her debut Swordbird when she was 12. Other books she published as a teenager include Sword Quest (2008) and Sword Mountain (2012).
Kat Zhang (born 1991) was 20 when she sold, in a three-book deal, her entire Hybrid Chronicles trilogy. The first book, What's Left of Me, was published 2012.

See also 
Lists of books

References 

Books Written By Children and Teenagers
books
Children And Teenagers, Written By
Chi