Kathryn Thornton bitterly recalls a childhood Christmas when her brother got the chemistry set she had asked for because her parents thought it more fitting to give the gift to a boy. But what may have been a grand disappointment in the eight-year-old's world did not limit her ambitions. Thornton, now the assistant dean of graduate programs and a professor in the Engineering School, is also a veteran of four space missions.
Among her accomplishments, Thornton currently holds the record for the most hours of extravehicular activity in space by a woman and has logged more than 975 hours in space, according to the NASA Web site. But Thornton isn't concerned with competition.
"Records are made to be broken," she said. "It's irrelevant really
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