Our Black History Month Thursday profiles so far have included figures from the fields of music, theater, and computer science. We wrap up our profile series by celebrating a woman whose impact on the fields of mathematics and science is felt by many people on a daily basis. Dr. Gladys West, a former public school math teacher who left the education field to pursue a career as a mathematician in the U.S. Navy, is recognized as one of the key figures in the development of GPS.
Dr. West was one of only four African-American employees at the Naval Surface Warfare Center at Dahlgren when she was hired as a mathematician in 1956 to analyze satellite data. In the nascent era of computers, Dr. West was performing computations that no machine could realize at the time. After working at the Dahlgren center, she was involved in astronomical studies in which her skill proved the relationship between the solar orbits of Pluto and Neptune that had only previously been theorized.
This led her to become a project manager on the Seasat radar project that used satellites to remotely sense oceans during the late 1970s and throughout the 1980s. This was the jumping off point for the invention of GPS technology. It was through Dr. West's abilities in mathematics, astronomy, and computer programming that she was able to create the algorithms (and program them into computers) that would help create one of the first extremely accurate models of the Earth. Dr. West had a knack for being able to find answers to questions that scientists had been posing throughout history. It was this model of the earth that became the basis of GPS technology.
Sadly, Dr. West's achievements went unrecognized by the general public for far too long. She truly was one of the hidden figures in our nation's STEM fields. It was not until 2017 that the then-new commander of the Naval Surface Warfare Center at Dahlgren recognized Dr. West's role in the development of modern satellite positioning technology...strangely enough in an article written for Black History Month. In 2018, Dr. West was inducted into the Space and Missiles Pioneers Hall of Fame for the role that she (and her breakthroughs) played in the development of our nation's space program.
Think about it - without the work of pioneers such as Dr. Gladys West, we would not be able to perform some of the tasks that have become routine in modern society. In addition to being able to do mundane things like find directions and tag posts with locations in social media, her work has helped our military, allowed us to navigate through our solar system, and know the world how we never would have without her.
Dr. West truly embodies the spirit of Black History Month. We are proud to celebrate her as an innovator, pioneer, and a no-longer hidden figure in the fields of science, technology, and mathematics.
As with all of our profiles this month, we are trying to provide a piece of media that can be useful for teachers or students while planning lessons. For this week, we include a link to a video from PBS about Dr. West and her husband Ira. It focuses on their reflections on their careers in the early stages of integration during the Civil Rights era and on some of the obstacles that African-Americans had to overcome in the state of Virginia.