Gladys West, Unsung Figure in Development of GPS, Dies at 95 [View all]
Source: NYT
As a Navy mathematician in the 1950s and beyond, she played an unheralded but foundational role in making possible the global satellite-based mapping system.
By Michael S. Rosenwald Jan. 27, 2026
Gladys West, a mathematician at the U.S. Naval Weapons Laboratory whose modeling of the Earth’s shape played a critical role in the development of GPS, the global satellite mapping system that pilots, firefighters and drivers use to get where they’re going, died on Jan. 17 in Fredericksburg, Va. She was 95.
Dr. West lived with her daughter, Carolyn West Oglesby, and died at her home.
Born to Black farmers in rural Virginia, Dr. West lived through remarkable societal and technological transformations — from segregation to the civil rights movement, from calculators to supercomputers, and from paper maps to Google Maps.
Through it all, she worked in near obscurity. She was almost 90 before she received any recognition for her work.
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ORIGINAL link: https://www.nytimes.com/2026/01/27/science/gladys-west-dead.html
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