Michael Foale

Colin Michael Foale, CBE, PhD, (born 6 January 1957) is an Anglo-American astrophysicist and a NASA astronaut. He is a veteran of six space shuttle missions and extended stays on both Mir and the International Space Station. He was the first Briton to perform a space walk, and held the record until 17 April 2008 (when Expedition 16 commander Peggy Whitson exceeded Foale's record), for most time spent in space by a UK and US citizen: 374 days, 11 hours, 19 minutes. Born in Louth to English father Colin and an American mother, he was raised in Cambridge and educated at The King's School, Canterbury. A member of the Air Training Corps, he studied at Queens' College, Cambridge, receiving a doctorate in laboratory astrophysics in 1982. When he left university he: "owned two pairs of jeans, a donkey jacket, a bicycle and a pilot’s licence; which shows I had my priorities absolutely right.” Foale joined the mission operations division of NASA in 1983 aged 24, working on the shuttles... full article at wikipedia