Gladys West

Hello! My name is Gladys West. I was born on October 27th, 1930, in a state called Virginia. I grew up on a small farm with my family. I loved helping them, but I knew that farm life was not what I wanted to do forever. My favorite place to be was at school. I loved learning new things and reading books. I dreamed of leaving the farm and using my brain to do something big in the world.

I worked very hard in school, and my favorite subject was math. Numbers just made sense to me! Because I was the best student in my high school class, I won a special award called a scholarship to help me pay for college. I went to a school called Virginia State College and decided to study math there. It was so exciting to learn all about numbers and how they can help us understand the world around us.

After college, in 1956, I got a very important job at a place called the Naval Proving Ground in Dahlgren, Virginia. In those days, not many women, and very few Black women, were hired to be scientists. But they needed my math skills! My job was to solve very, very hard math problems. Sometimes, they even called us “human computers” because we could figure out answers that the early computers couldn’t. It was at this job that I met another mathematician named Ira West, and we got married.

My biggest project was helping to figure out the exact shape of the Earth. Did you know our planet is not a perfect round ball? It’s a little bumpy and wobbly! My job was to use math and giant, room-sized computers to create a very careful and exact model of our planet. For a long, long time, my work was a secret, but it was super important. It helped other scientists invent something you probably use all the time: the Global Positioning System, or GPS!

For many years, almost no one knew about the work I did. But finally, my story came out. In 2018, I was honored by the U.S. Air Force for all the important work I had done. It makes me so happy to know that my love for math helped create the GPS that is in cars and phones today. Every time your family uses a map on their phone to find their way, they are using the ideas I helped develop. I hope my story shows you that if you work hard and follow your dreams, you can help change the world, too.