Gladys West: The Mathematician Behind GPS
March is Women's History Month, a time to celebrate the trailblazing women whose contributions have shaped our world, often without the recognition they deserve. This month, we're spotlighting Dr. Gladys B. West.
Who is Gladys West?
West was the bright and ambitious daughter of a factory worker and a railroad laborer in rural Virginia. She was a stellar student and graduated valedictorian of her high school class, earning a scholarship to Virginia State College (now University), where she earned her BS in Mathematics. West earned a master's in mathematics before she began her job with the Naval Surface Warfare Center at Dahlgren.
What technology did Gladys West create?
Before calculators, the US Government employed women mathematicians like West to perform complex, repetitive mathematical computations. Although she wasn’t a part of the NASA team featured in the 2016 Disney film, West is another hidden figure in American history. “She was the second African-American woman hired at the base, among only four African-American employees in total” (Library of Virginia: Changemakers).
In her tenure with IBM in the mid 1970s through the 80s, Dr. West played “pivotal roles in charting orbital trajectories and creating accurate mathematical models of the Earth's shape that would eventually be used by the GPS satellite orbit,” (NPR).
What is the Global Positioning System (GPS)?
Global Positioning System (GPS) technology is a service of the US Government, powered by satellites, ground stations, and receivers. The ground stations send signals to the satellites. Receivers listen for signals and calculate location based on the nearest satellites.
GPS tech has been in our cars’ navigation systems since the 1990s. Since then, smartphones have enabled the general use of GPS-enabled technology. Most folks interact with GPS tech every day, by way of map apps on our phones. But GPS isn’t just used for getting around, and it wasn’t invented for that purpose, either. There is a rich history behind the RF-powered innovation that allows us to use our phones to get from point A to point B.
The navigation tools we use every day wouldn’t exist without Dr. West, the mathematician whose groundbreaking work quietly transformed how humanity navigates the planet.
Gladys West’s Technological Legacy
Dr. West's contributions remind us that the technologies we rely on most are rarely the work of a single moment or a single person: we stand on the shoulders of the innovators who came before us. GPS is now woven into the fabric of modern life, and it can be traced back to the mathematical models that Dr. Gladys West helped build.
Her story is also a reminder that representation matters in STEM. West worked as one of the very few African-American employees at Dahlgren, quietly producing work that would be a part of today’s vital technological scaffolding. As the technology sector continues to evolve, we carry forward a responsibility to recognize the human effort that got us here.
If you want to dive deeper, you can read Dr. West’s story in her own words in her autobiography: It Began with a Dream.
RF Engineering for GPS and Communications
At RDG, we’ve heard plenty of decent (and occasionally impossible) applications for GPS technology. We’ve worked with the Army to develop a GPS jamming simulator for training purposes and developed tactical communications for training warfighters to cope in GPS-denied environments. If you want to learn more about jamming simulation, check out our blog post explaining how it works.
RF Engineering Consulting & Services
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