Dr. Gladys West’s contribution to the field of transportation was to develop computer and mathematical models that made the Global Positioning System possible.
Gladys West (née Brown) was born in Sutherland, Virginia in 1930. Sutherland is about 140 miles northeast of Raleigh. At that time it was a tobacco producing area and Dr. West’s family were sharecroppers. She attended Virginia State College (now University), a historically black university (HBCU), earning a bachelors and master’s degrees in mathematics.
West took a job at the US Naval Proving Ground in Dahlgren, Virginia in 1956 after discrimination was banned in Federal hiring practices (though the community in Virginia was segregated). The first part of her career coincided with the Space Race. This was a period of great synergy between computational mathematicians and physicists. It was also when electronic computers opened new possibilities for analyzing data. West programmed room-sized supercomputers, creating programs that would translate scientific ideas into algorithms…and ensuring they worked correctly.
In the late 1970s and early 1980s, her work served as the backbone for the creation of the Global Positioning System (GPS). GPS was created initially for military applications and made available for civilian use. Her ideas increased the precision of the measurements calculated from satellite transmissions. All people owe Dr. West for the computations that she developed and tested in the first part of her career—without them, GPS would not be as accurate as it is. Her ideas and effort enabled real-time navigation, transit tracking, and other foundational components of today’s transportation system.
West returned to school after her 42-year service to the US Navy, earning her Ph.D. from Virginia Tech in 2000.
Raleigh Transportation recognizes Dr. Gladys West as a pioneer in the transportation field.