American mathematician Gladys West, who “really liked geometry” — and paved the way for GPS
She navigated segregation to become an esteemed mathematician—and today, her work helps billions of people navigate the world.
The American mathematician died this week at the age of 95 Gladys Westwhose pioneering career contributed fundamental elements to what would become the GPS satellite system and was later recognized as a GPS “hidden figure”.
“Gladys passed away peacefully alongside her family and friends and is now in heaven with her loved ones”, the family wrote in a publication on X, in which they announced her death.
West, who is credited with notable achievements in mathematics, played key roles in tracing of orbital trajectories and in creating precise mathematical models of the Earth’s shape that would eventually be used by orbiting GPS satellites.
But curiously, as he admitted in 2020, he didn’t really use the innovative system he helped create. “I would say minimally”, he replied when asked if he used GPS. “I prefer maps“.
Born Gladys Mae Brown, In 1930, West grew up on a small farm in Dinwiddie County, Virginia. Attended a single room school with a teacher, and in his memoir, “It Began with a Dream,” West wrote about the aspirations he had during those early years.
“Every day I wished and dreamed of having more — more books, more classrooms, more teachers, and more time to dream and imagine what life would be like if only we could fly away from the hard, seemingly never-ending work on our family farm.”
Realizing that the education could open doors to a new lifeWest made a commitment to “be the best you could be and absorb so much knowledge as much as a little farm girl could take“.
As he approached the completion of secondary education in his segregated school, the teachers encouraged her to pursue a degree in mathematics. “If it were up to me, I would have chosen home economics. But I really liked geometry,” he added. “I fell in love with that“.
daughter of farmers who also worked in a tobacco factory and for the railroads, West would first have to discover a way to attend university, says .
When I found out that the best final year student in your high school She was guaranteed a scholarship to university and was motivated to get the place. He used the scholarship to attend Virginia State College, where he studied mathematics.
After graduating, he taught math and science in segregated schools in Virginia, and earned his master’s degree in 1955 — the same year President Dwight Eisenhower prohibited racial discrimination in federal hiring.
A year later, he was offered a job in Dahlgren, Virginia, at the Naval Proving Ground, which later became the Naval Surface Warfare Center Dahlgren Division. “There were three other black professionals“, recalled West.
“We were respectful of leaders and tried to treat them the way we wanted them to treat us if we were in the same position.” One of the other professionals was Ira West, a mathematicianwhom he married in 1957.
“I met her on a lunch break,” Ira West told PBS in 2020, recalling What did your future wife wear?: a blue pleated skirt and a white blouse. “When I first saw her, I knew there was something there for me“, he said. “But she didn’t know there was something for her when she looked at me.”
The couple had three children and seven grandchildren; Ira West passed away in 2024.
Gladys West worked in the naval program for 42 years. In a 2021 interview, he said that two things helped her dealing with the limitations imposed by racism: he liked his work; and I wanted more black people to have the opportunity to do so.
