Dr. Gladys Mae West is an American mathematician known for her major role in the invention of Global Positioning System (GPS). Born in 1930, in Dinwiddie County, Virginia, to a family of farmers, West grew up working on the tobacco and cotton fields. Knowing that she wanted to leave at some point and pursue an education, West went on to win a scholarship to attend Virginia State College where she eventually majored in math, a subject she pointed out was dominated by men. Hired in 1956, as a mathematician, at the U.S. Naval Surface Warfare Center Dahlgren Division, where she was the second black woman ever to be employed, West worked on an award winning astronomical study that proved the planet Pluto’s motion relative to Neptune. During the mid-1970s through the 1980s, she also helped program an IBM 7030 “Stretch” computer that delivered “refined calculations for an extremely accurate geodetic Earth model. This program ended up becoming the Global Positioning System (GPS) orbit. In 1986, West published "Data Processing System Specifications for the Geosat Satellite Radar Altimeter", a 60 page illustrated guide. The Naval Surface Weapons Center (NSWC) guide was published to explain how to increase the accuracy of the estimation of "geoid heights and vertical deflection", topics of satellite geodesy. This was achieved by processing the data created from the radio altimeter on the Geosat satellite which went into orbit on March 12, 1984. After working at Dahlgren for 42 years, West would retire in 1998. West’s contributions to GPS were only uncovered when a member of her sorority, Alpha Kappa Alpha, read a short biography West had submitted for an alumni function. In 2018, Dr. West was inducted into the United States Air Force Hall of Fame, one of the Air Force Space Command's highest honours. She was described as one of the pioneering hidden figures who did essential mathematical computing for the United States Armed Forces before electronic systems. #Day2 #DrGladysWest #BlackHistoryMonthTribute #GPS #USAF (at Hidden History) https://www.instagram.com/p/BtZMs7JFVk7/?utm_source=ig_tumblr_share&igshid=eynheojvydif
