The Sundarban 
Gladys West and Sam Smith peep over data from the Global Positioning Machine, which Gladys helped produce at the Naval Proving Floor in Dahlgren, VA in 1985.
(Image credit: US Navy)
A “hidden figure” of GPS vogue has handed away.
Gladys West, 95, died Saturday of natural causes, basically basically based on a family X put up cited by National Public Radio (NPR). West “passed peacefully alongside her family and friends and is now in heaven with her loved ones,” the X put up read.
West, a Dark girl, went from a childhood within the Jim Crow era of segregation to an maturity formulating pioneering objects for the form of the Earth—which helps account for the know-how of world positioning methods (GPS) for navigation. But West did no longer the truth is relate herself as one of the four billion users of GPS. When an NPR affiliate requested about it in 2020, West acknowledged she outmoded GPS on a “minimal” basis. “I prefer maps,” she added.
West (then Gladys Mae Brown) was born Oct. 27, 1930 south of Richmond, Virginia in rural Sutherland, basically basically based on Encyclopedia Britannica. Her fogeys had a shrimp farm, moreover different jobs. Most of the population of the place was made up of tenant farmers is known as sharecroppers.
West at the initiate anticipated her profession would lead her to the farm, or to take on the work her mother had, at a tobacco-processing plant. College proved in every other case.
West grew to change into valedictorian of her excessive college graduating class, then went to the traditionally Dark Virginia State College (now Virginia State University) on a rotund scholarship. She earned a bachelor level, then a masters level, of science in mathematics. She also taught in Virginia’s colleges, which had been racially segregated at the time, Britannica famed.
A one year after she graduated in 1955, the identical one year as when President Dwight Eisenhower banned racial discrimination in hiring, West began working at what was then called the Naval Proving Floor in Dahlgren, Virginia. “There were three other Black professionals,” West advised NPR. “We were respectful to the leaders and tried to treat them the way we wanted them to treat us, if we were in the same position.”
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West stayed on the job at Dahlgren for 42 years, basically basically based on the Department of Protection (DoD). Her work entails participating in a 1960s seek that confirmed the motion of Pluto is typical when put next with Neptune, and foundational work that assisted with the vogue of GPS within the Seventies and Eighties.
“West used complex algorithms to account for variations in gravitational, tidal and other forces that distort Earth’s shape,” DoD stated. “She programmed the IBM 7030 computer, also known as Stretch, to deliver increasingly refined calculations for an extremely accurate model of the Earth’s shape, optimized for what ultimately became the GPS orbit used by satellites.”
West’s profession was no longer widely known until the 2016 publication of the e-book “Hidden Figures” by Margot Lee Shetterly, and the Hollywood movie in line with the e-book that identical one year. After then, nonetheless, awards mounted. The DoD acknowledged some of West’s accolades integrated:
- Induction into the Air Pressure Status and Missile Pioneers Hall of Reputation in 2018.
- The Webby Lifetime Fulfillment Award in 2021.
- The Prince Philip Medal by the UK’s Royal Academy of Engineering in 2021.
- The National Museum of the Floor Navy’s Freedom of the Seas Exploration and Innovation Award in 2021.
West was predeceased in 2024 by her husband of 57 years, Ira, who she met on the job at the Naval Proving Floor, NPR’s relate acknowledged. The Wests had three children and seven grandchildren.
Elizabeth Howell (she/her), Ph.D., was a crew author within the spaceflight channel between 2022 and 2024 that specialise in Canadian home information. She was contributing author for Status.com for 10 years from 2012 to 2024. Elizabeth’s reporting entails multiple exclusives with the White Dwelling, main world protection about a misplaced-and-found home tomato on the International Status Station, witnessing five human spaceflight launches on two continents, flying parabolic, working interior a spacesuit, and participating in a simulated Mars mission. Her latest e-book, “Why Am I Taller?” (ECW Press, 2022) is co-written with astronaut Dave Williams.
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