![]() She became a member of Alpha Kappa Alpha sorority, majored in mathematics and began working as a teacher following graduation. She was a first-generation college student growing up in the times of segregation. West graduated valedictorian of her high school and earned a scholarship to Virginia State University. Her books were old, her learning conditions weren’t very satisfactory, but she pressed on. Gladys Mae West (1931) is an African-American mathematician known for her contributions to the mathematical modeling of the shape of the Earth and the inventor of the GPS.īorn in 1931 in Dinwiddie Country, Virginia, West decided at a very early age that she would use education to make her way out of poverty. Keep checking back on and stay tuned to the AccuWeather Network on DirecTV, Frontier, Spectrum, Fubo, and Verizon Fios. Also around the same time, she was inducted into the Air Force Space and Missile Hall of Fame, one of the federal organization's highest honors. Later that year, WTLV-TV reported, West earned her Ph.D. The health problems did little to slow her down. "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 Ph.D.'," West told The Free Lance-Star in an interview at the time. In a 2011 interview West said, "I feel like I made a real good contribution to the accuracy of the Global Positioning System."Īfter 42 years at Dahlgren, West retired in 1998.įive months after retirement, West suffered a stroke that impaired her hearing and vision, balance and use of her right side, according to The Free Lance-Star, a Virginia-based newspaper. "We started working with satellite data a lot because there are different stations, satellite stations placed all around the world and they would get data in and we would have to code algorithms to sort of verify the data that we were receiving, and then I worked some with geoid Heis because they were trying to measure exactly where the satellite was and where things were and so I did- geoid Heis had to do with the undulations in the water and so fine-tuning, it was fine-tuning that measurement, that distance from the satellite," West said. ![]() West worked on verifying satellites' exact location by looking at data that was transmitted through computer software that processed geoid heights, or precise surface elevations. So the different people who did civilian applications learned to use the database that we generated and that was the foundation that GPS was built on." "A lot goes into the scientific computation to generate an orbit which is a database used in GPS. "My part in the global positioning system would be working more with over the water," West said. Gladys Mae West pictured at Dahlgren with Sam Smith in 1985 reviewing data from the Global Positioning System she helped develop. The results of the work she did eventually led to the creation of GPS.ĭr. ![]() So we had to learn how to program and code for this big computer," West said. We hadn't had any computer teaching or knowledge, so we had to master this job that they wanted us to do. ![]() "At the same time that we were coming to work here they were also bringing in a large computer and they brought in these mathematicians to learn to work this computer. West continued programming large-scale computers in the Naval Surface Warfare Center Dahlgren Division and worked as a project manager for data-processing systems used for information gathered by satellites. "That was the biggest computer in the Navy at the time that they installed, so that was exciting because it was so fast and you could code much larger programs," West recalled. Eventually, a computer was installed and she took the role of being its programmer. Navy)Īt the beginning of her career, West worked as a mathematician that verified tables, calculating everything by hand. Gladys Mae West and her husband, Ira West (U.S.
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