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Dr. Gladys West, The ‘Hidden Figure’ Of GPS Technology, Honored By The Air Force

Dr. Gladys West, The ‘Hidden Figure’ Of GPS Technology, Honored By The Air Force

Dr. Gladys West, a mathematician who played a major role in the invention of global positioning system technology, was inducted into the Air Force Hall of Fame this month for her work for the U.S. military in the 1950s and ’60s.

Her work helped create the popular GPS technology now incorporated into cell phones, cars, and social media.


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The ceremony was held in honor of West, 87, at the Pentagon in Washington, D.C. She was inducted into the Air Force Space and Missile Pioneers Hall of Fame earlier this month — one of the Air Force’s highest honors, First Coast News reported.

West was one of the real-life “Hidden Figures” made famous by the 2017 movie starring Taraji P. Henson, Octavia Spencer and Janelle Monae — Black women who did computing for the U.S. military in the era before electronic systems.

Gladys West
Gladys West. Photo: provided

She was recognized for the work she did as one of the agency’s “human computers”. When West joined the Naval Surface Warfare Center in Virginia in 1956, she was one of just four Black employees, two of whom were men. One of those men, Ira West, would later become her husband.

Early in her career, West contributed to an award-winning astronomical study that proved the regularity of Pluto’s rotation relative to Neptune. From the mid-1970s through the 1980s, she programmed a computer to come up with a super-accurate model of the Earth, accounting for variations in the planet’s shape caused by gravitational, tidal, and other forces. This model laid the groundwork for GPS, according to the Patrick Air Force Base website.

Gladys West
Gladys West. Photo: Handout

From the mid-1970s through the ’80s, she programmed an IBM 7030 “Stretch” computer to deliver increasingly refined calculations for an extremely accurate geodetic Earth model, a geoid, optimized for what ultimately became the Global Positioning System (GPS) orbit. She sued complex algorithms to account for variations in gravitational, tidal, and other forces that distort Earth’s shape.

West retired from the military in 1998, but continued her education. In 2018, she completed her Ph.D. with Virginia Tech through an online program.

Born in Dinwiddie County, Va., West majored in math at college — an area of study dominated by men, BBC reported. She was honored in March 2018 by the Virginia Senate in Richmond for her achievements, according to Vibe.