In honor of each Girls’s Historical past Month and Black Historical past Month, an up to date repost about Gladys West.
From maps to apps to chartplotters, all of us depend on GPS as of late, generally whether or not we understand it or not. Ethan Siegel wrote in Forbes: Unbeknownst to most individuals, nonetheless, the science underlying this know-how was primarily developed by two individuals: Albert Einstein, whose theories of particular and normal relativity each play an necessary function, and Gladys West, a still-living and largely unheralded Black girl whose scientific contributions enabled us to grasp geodesy and the form of the Earth effectively sufficient to make GPS know-how doable.
Gladys West was born in Dinwiddie County, VA, the daughter of a small farm proprietor. Not desirous to spend her life working within the fields or within the native tobacco processing manufacturing facility, she determined that an training was her solely manner out. She graduated first in her highschool class and earned a scholarship to varsity, the place she studied arithmetic.
After graduating, she taught for a number of years earlier than touchdown a job in 1956 on the Naval Floor Warfare Heart in Dalghren, VA. She was the second black girl and one among solely 4 black staff working on the facility. One of many others was a mathematician named Ira West. The 2 dated for 18 months earlier than they married in 1957.
Whereas Ira spent most of his profession creating laptop packages for ballistic missiles launched from submarines, Gladys’ calculations focussed on satellites. She collected information from the satellites, specializing in data that helped to find out their actual location as they transmitted from world wide. The info was laboriously analyzed utilizing large-scale computer systems that stuffed complete rooms. Gladys additionally wrote laptop software program that processed geoid heights, or exact floor elevations.
West’s work on the fashionable day GPS system throughout her 42-year profession on the Navy base in Dahlgren was important to the event of the World Positioning System within the Nineteen Fifties and Nineteen Sixties.
“Whenever you’re working day by day, you’re not considering, ‘What influence is that this going to have on the world?’ You’re considering, ‘I’ve bought to get this proper.’”
In a message, written in 2017, Capt Godfrey Weekes, then-commanding officer at Dahlgren, stated Mrs. West performed an “integral function” within the growth of GPS.
“As Gladys West began her profession as a mathematician at Dahlgren in 1956, she possible had no concept that her work would influence the world for many years to return.”
“I believe I did assist,” she says, of her changing into a task mannequin for different girls.
“Now we have made a variety of progress since once I got here in, as a result of now a minimum of you may discuss issues and be open a bit extra.
“Earlier than you type of whispered and checked out one another, or one thing, however now the world is opening up a bit bit and making it simpler for ladies.
“However they nonetheless gotta battle.”
After retirement, Gladys West went on to earn a PhD, regardless of numerous well being points together with a stroke and breast most cancers.
Gladys, now 92, and her husband Ira, reside in King George County, Virginia and have been married for greater than 60 years.
In 2018, Dr. Gladys West was inducted into the Air Drive House and Missile Pioneers Corridor of Fame throughout a ceremony on the Pentagon. The Pioneers Corridor of Fame is one among Air Drive’s House Instructions Highest Honors.
