She was the second black woman and one of only four black employees working at the facility. One of the others was a mathematician named Ira West. She graduated first in her high school class and earned a scholarship to college, where she studied mathematics.Īfter graduating, she taught for a few years before landing a job in 1956 at the Naval Surface Warfare Center in Dalghren, VA. Not wanting to spend her life working in the fields or in the local tobacco processing factory, she decided that an education was her only way out. Gladys West was born in Dinwiddie County, VA, the daughter of a small farm owner. In honor of Black History Month, here is an updated repost about the Black female mathematician whose work for the Navy made a major contribution to the development of the Global Positioning System. Now, we all know who Albert Einstien was. Ethan Siegel wrote in Forbes: Unbeknownst to most people, however, the science underlying this technology was primarily developed by two people: Albert Einstein, whose theories of special and general relativity both play an important role, and Gladys West, a still-living and largely unheralded Black woman whose scientific contributions enabled us to understand geodesy and the shape of the Earth well enough to make GPS technology possible. In honor of both Women’s History Month and Black History Month, an updated repost about Gladys West.įrom maps to apps to chartplotters, we all rely on GPS these days, sometimes whether we realize it or not.
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