Gladys West was an American mathematician known for her work contributing to the development of the Global Positioning System (GPS). After earning bachelor’s and master’s degrees at Virginia State College (now Virginia State University), she was hired as a mathematician by the U.S. Naval Proving Ground (later the Naval Surface Warfare Center), a weapons laboratory in Dahlgren, Virginia; she was only their fourth Black employee.
In 1978 West was named project manager of Seasat, an experimental U.S. ocean surveillance satellite designed to provide data on a wide array of oceanographic conditions and features, including wave height, water temperature, currents, winds, icebergs, and coastal characteristics. It was the first project to demonstrate that satellites could be used to observe useful oceanographic data. Out of West’s work on Seasat came GEOSAT, a satellite programmed to create computer models of Earth’s surface. By teaching a computer to account for gravity, tides, and other forces that act on Earth’s surface, West and her team created a program that could precisely calculate the orbits of satellites. These calculations made it possible to determine a model for the exact shape of Earth, called a geoid. It is this model, and later updates, that allows the GPS system to make accurate calculations of any place on Earth.
West, who retired in 1998, was formally recognized for her contribution to the development of GPS by the Virginia General Assembly in 2018. That same year she was also inducted into the Air Force Space and Missile Pioneers Hall of Fame. West died on January 17, 2026, at her home in Alexandria, Virginia, at the age of 95.