Photos courtesy of the West family
Dr. Gladys Brown West enabled the GPS with her mathematical modeling of the world.
- Inductee US Air Force Space and Missiles Hall of Fame
- Recipient Prince Philip Medal by UK Royal Academy of Engineering
- Virginia Tech Distinguished Achievement Awardee May 2024
As a poor black child born to parents who owned a small farm in Sutherland, Virginia during the height of segregation, Dr. Gladys Brown West was destined to a back-breaking farm life. Instead, West transformed her life through her dogged pursuit of education and her innate mathematical brilliance. The journey took perseverance as she struggled to pay for her education at a historically black public university, then Virginia State College, now University. She chose mathematics as her major, a field largely dominated by white men. However, when she graduated in 1952, while she applied for government work, she could find only public teaching jobs. She continued studying and received a masters in mathematics in 1955 from her alma mater. Finally in 1956 she was hired at the naval base in Dahlgren, only one of only four black employees hired. Like the women depicted in Hidden Figures, West was essential to the astronomical work done there in the 1960s.
Then in the 1970s through 1980s, work refocused. Dr. West led a group of five who developed a mathematical model of the world that provided the framework for GPS. Because she was a government employee, she was not allowed to be publicly engaged in the civil rights movement, but was a silent supporter, focusing her energy on her achievements and earning another masters in Public Administration. According to Dr. West, “I feel proud of myself as a woman, knowing that I can do what I can do. But, as a black woman, that’s another level where you have to prove to a society that hasn’t accepted you for what you are. What I did was keep trying to prove that I was as good as you are.”
Sadly, it was not until 20 years after she retired in 1998 that Dr. West received recognition for her extraordinary contributions in science and publicly thanked for her work with creating GPS. Notably, Dr. West earned her PhD in public administration at age 70!
