Key Takeaways

• Gladys West’s calculations with the U.S. Navy helped shape the satellite data that powers GPS today.
• Her contributions remained largely unrecognized until later in life, especially after Hidden Figures.
• She broke barriers in education and tech, inspiring future generations of Black women in STEM.

The next time your phone reroutes you around traffic or your Uber finds you without a struggle, it’s worth remembering someone who helped make that everyday convenience possible. Gladys West, a groundbreaking mathematician whose work contributed to the development of GPS, has died. She was 95.

The news was confirmed Sunday (Jan. 18) in a statement posted to West’s X account. “This morning, the world lost a pioneer in Dr. Gladys West. She passed peacefully alongside her family and friends and is now in heaven with her loved ones,” the statement read. “We thank you in advance for all of the love and prayers you have and will continue to provide.”

West’s journey started in Dinwiddie County, Virginia, where she was born in 1930 and grew up on a farm during segregation. She didn’t have the luxury of dreaming without discipline. She had chores, long days, and the kind of responsibility that forces you to mature early. But school was always the goal, and she made sure it stayed that way. After graduating as valedictorian from her segregated high school, West earned a scholarship to Virginia State College, now Virginia State University. She later pledged Alpha Kappa Alpha Sorority, Inc., and went on to earn both her bachelor’s and master’s degrees in mathematics.

That education opened doors that weren’t built with Black women in mind. West became only the second Black woman hired at the Naval Proving Ground in Virginia, now Naval Support Facility Dahlgren, a U.S. Navy research, development, test, and evaluation center. She would spend over 40 years doing the kind of work that rarely gets the spotlight, but changes the world anyway.

How Gladys West’s work helped lay the groundwork for GPS

During her decades with the Navy, West worked on detailed calculations, using both hand computations and early computer systems to support teams studying the shape and measurements of Earth. That research helped create the groundwork for the GPS technology now used globally in cars, phones and beyond.

Even after she retired, West kept going. She later earned her doctorate at Virginia Tech. But in a twist that still makes people smile, West wasn’t glued to GPS in her personal life. She preferred paper maps instead. “I’m a doer, hands-on kind of person. If I can see the road and see where it turns and see where it went, I am more sure,” West said in an interview with The Guardianback in 2020.

Gladys West said ‘Hidden Figures’ made her feel seen

West also spoke to the outlet about the moment she watched Hidden Figures, the 2016 biographical drama inspired by the real-life stories of three Black women mathematicians who worked at NASA during the Space Race. The film stars Taraji P. Henson, Octavia Spencer, and Janelle Monáe. “I really loved the movie, and I didn’t know that that was going on with them. But they were doing something similar,” she said.

For West, the film wasn’t just entertainment; it was recognition. After years of doing world-changing work quietly, the movie helped put language to something she’d lived through firsthand: the pressure of proving yourself in spaces where you weren’t always expected to shine. “I felt proud of myself as a woman, knowing that I can do what I can do. But as a Black woman, that’s another level where you have to prove to a society that hasn’t accepted you for what you are. What I did was keep trying to prove that I was as good as you are,” she said. “There is no difference in the work we can do.”