10/29/2025
Happy 95th birthday to Dr. Gladys West, the pioneering mathematician whose highly precise geodetic model of the Earth became the foundation for the Global Positioning System (GPS)! West was born in a rural Virginia community of sharecroppers in 1930, but from an early age she had ambition to go beyond farm or factory work. "I thought at first I needed to go to the city. I thought that would get me out of the country and out of the fields," she remembers. "But then as I got more educated, went into the higher grades, I learned that education was the thing to get me out."
West was valedictorian in her high school, which won her a scholarship to attend Virginia State College. There, she became one of only a handful of women studying mathematics. "You felt a little bit different," she later reflected. "You didn't quite fit in as you did in home economics." After teaching for several years after graduation, West accepted a position at the Naval Surface Warfare Center in Dahlgren, Virginia in 1956 -- only the second Black woman they had ever hired -- analyzing data from satellites.
At first, that meant math on paper: "We would come in and sit at our desks and we would logic away, go through all the steps anyone would have to do to solve the mathematical problem." But when computers entered the scene, it meant learning how to program -- and being ready to catch the computers' mistakes. "Nine times out of 10 they weren't completely right," she recalls, "so you had to analyze them and find out what was different to what you expected." West was involved in an award-winning astronomical study in the early 1960s that showed how Pluto moved relative to Neptune, and her department head recommended her for a new role as project manager for the Seasat radar altimetry project, involving the first Earth-orbiting satellite that could remotely sense oceans.
The Seasat project became the jumping off point for further satellite modeling of the globe, and from the mid-1970s through the 1980s, West worked on programming an IBM 7030 “Stretch” computer with increasingly refined algorithms. She was then able to create an extremely accurate geodetic Earth model, even factoring in details like gravitational and tidal forces that slightly change the Earth's shape. This model would later become the foundation for the GPS satellite system, which is widely used today for countless applications from navigation to communication. However, after West retired from her post in 1998, her contributions to GPS were largely forgotten.
West wasn't idle in retirement, although a stroke temporarily slowed her down. While she was recovering, she set a new goal: "all of a sudden, these words came into my head: 'You can’t stay in the bed, you’ve got to get up from here and get your PhD.'" She became Dr. West in 2018, thanks to a remote studies program with Virginia Tech. That year, West was inducted into the U.S. Air Force's Hall of Fame in a ceremony in her honor at the Pentagon; the Air Force hailed her as one of "the leaders of the early years of the Air Force space program."
Today, West says that she hopes her example will inspire another generation of female pioneers. "I think I did help," she reflects. "The world is opening up a little bit and making it easier for women. But they still gotta fight."
Dr. West is one of the brilliant women featured in the inspiring picture book "She Persisted in Science: Brilliant Women Who Made a Difference" for ages 5 to 9 at https://www.amightygirl.com/she-persisted-in-science
For adult readers, she has also published a memoir "It Began With a Dream" at https://amzn.to/3uQqAlm
To introduce kids to more trailblazing women mathematicians, we highly recommend the picture books "The Girl With A Mind For Math" for ages 5 to 9 (https://www.amightygirl.com/the-girl-with-a-mind-for-math), "Emmy Noether: The Most Important Mathematician You've Never Heard Of" for ages 5 to 9 (https://www.amightygirl.com/emmy-noether-mathematician), and "The Story of Unshakable Mathematician Sophie Germain" for ages 6 to 9 (https://www.amightygirl.com/nothing-stopped-sophie)
For older kids, there's a stunning introduction to seven pioneering women in math, "Grasping Mysteries: Girls Who Loved Math" for ages 9 and up at https://www.amightygirl.com/grasping-mysteries
For our favorite math toys and games to encourage girls' love of math at every age, visit our blog post "Add It Up! Top 35 Math Toys for Mighty Girls" at https://www.amightygirl.com/blog?p=12180
Thank you to the Society for Canadian Women in Science and Technology for sharing this image! IG: https://www.instagram.com/scwist.canada/
