Dr. Gladys West's mathematical modeling of Earth's shape became one of the scientific foundations that made modern GPS possible. Her work helped create the precise measurements that satellites need to determine locations on Earth. She was born on October 27, 1930 in Sutherland in Dinwiddie County, Virginia, and her family worked long hours on a small farm. As a child, she helped in the fields and saw firsthand how demanding farm labor could be. She later said she did not want a future "being out in the sun," and she believed education could help her find a different path.
School became the place where she focused her efforts. Dr. West earned strong grades in all of her classes. On June 7, 1948, she graduated as valedictorian of her high school, Dinwiddie Training School for Colored (now Dinwiddie County High School). This achievement helped her earn a scholarship to study mathematics at Virginia State University. She later earned a master's degree in mathematics from Virginia State and a master's degree in public administration from the University of Oklahoma.
Her education led to a career at the U.S. Navy base in Dahlgren, Virginia in 1956. The base, now known as the Naval Surface Warfare Center Dahlgren Division, was a center for scientific and technical research. Joining the team as a mathematician was a rare accomplishment for a Black woman in the early years of the Cold War.
During the 1950s and 1960s, early computers began to appear in military labs and research centers. These machines were large and difficult to operate, but they allowed researchers to perform complex calculations. Dr. West worked at the U.S. Naval Weapons Laboratory, and joined a team that relied on human calculation long before computers became common. Mathematicians learned earned early programming methods so they could use computers to complete work that once took weeks or months by hand.
One of her major assignments involved studying Earth's size and shape. Her early work also included serving on a five-member team in the Scientific Programming and Analysis Branch of the Computation Division that confirmed the steady movement of Pluto in relation to Neptune. The group received national recognition and was awarded the Award of Merit for Group Achievement in 1964.
Beginning in the mid-1970s, she focused on understanding Earth's true size and shape. The planet is not perfectly round, and its surface is affected by gravity, tides, and other natural forces. Dr. West used complex mathematical algorithms to describe these changes in a way that computers could measure.
She programmed an IBM 7030 Stretch computer to process huge amounts of data and create a more accurate model of Earth called a geoid. This model was improved again and again through her careful work. The more precise it became, the more it could help satellites understand where they were in space. Those calculations later became part of the system that made modern GPS accurate enough for everyday use.
GPS, or the Global Positioning System, developed over many years through the work of engineers, scientists, and mathematicians within the U.S. Department of Defense. No single person created the entire system. Instead, it evolved through several research programs and contributions from many people. West's geodetic modeling became one of the components that improved the accuracy of GPS and helped it become a reliable global tool..
Over her long career, West received recognition from the military and scientific community. In 2018, she was inducted into the Air Force Space and Missile Pioneers Hall of Fame, one of the highest honors given for work related to space operations. Her story has since been shared more widely as people have learned more about the individuals behind major scientific advances.
In 2020, Dr. West published her book It Began with a Dream. She wrote about her childhood, her education, and her work at Dahlgren. The book offered a detailed look at the challenges she faced and the persistence required to succeed in a field with few women and few Black scientists during her early career.
Dr. West retired in 1988 and is now 95 years old. She married her husband Ira V. West in 1957, soon after she joined the Navy base in Dahlgren. He passed away in 2024. She is a mother, and her work is recognized as a significant part of GPS history.
For many years, her role was not widely known outside technical and government communities. She has since been described as a "hidden figure," a term used for people whose contributions were important but often overlooked. But now the world knows her name.