Before becoming the first woman ever to compete in the Indianapolis 500 and the Daytona 500, Janet Guthrie had a diversified background. She was a pilot and flight instructor, an aerospace engineer, a technical editor, and a public representative for some of the countrys major corporations. She had 13 years of experience on sports car roadracing circuits, building and maintaining her own race cars, before being invited to test a car for Indianapolis.She was born in Iowa City, Iowa, on March 7, 1938. Her family moved to Miami, Florida when she was three. She attended Miss Harris Florida School for Girls for all but one of her elementary through highschool years, then graduated from the University of Michigan in 1960 with a B.Sc. in physics. She joined Republic Aviation in Farmingdale, New York, as a research and development engineer, working on programs that were precursors to Project Apollo. In 1964, she applied for the first ScientistAstronaut program, and got through the first round of eliminations. She treasures a letter from astronaut Deke Slayton, a memento of that attempt.

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Website: http://www.janetguthrie.com/