The woman who laid the foundation for the GPS global positioning system

Born on October 27, 1930, into a poor farming family, the black child Gladys West could not have imagined her future path: to become a mathematician and contribute to research that laid the foundation for the creation of the GPS positioning system.

In 2018, West was inducted into the United States Air Force Space and Missile Pioneers Hall of Fame - File photo

Gladys West was born in Sutherland, Virginia, during the early stages of the Great Depression. Her parents worked hard to make ends meet in a rural town where black residents had few employment opportunities other than farming and tobacco processing.

But while chopping wood and feeding chickens, West dreamed of “more”—“more books, more classes, more teachers, and more time to dream”—as she wrote in her memoir, “It Began With a Dream.”

From excellent students

In high school, West excelled in math and science . That's when she saw a path: the top two graduating students would receive college scholarships. West finished valedictorian and became the first in her family, and the second in her community, to attend college.

After graduating from Virginia State University with a bachelor's degree in mathematics, West became a teacher at a rural, segregated black high school. A few years later, she earned a master's degree in mathematics.

Not long after, West received a letter from the Naval Proving Ground, now the Naval Support Facility, in Dahlgren, Virginia. She applied for the position of mathematics specialist.

In 1956, when West arrived, Dahlgren was the Navy's main computer center. West's first assignment included programming and coding algorithms to calculate weapon system range tables, a top priority amid Cold War tensions between the United States and the Soviet Union.

She also worked on orbital research for the fledgling US satellite program, another Cold War-driven project.

I counted fence posts along the road and across fields as we walked to school, just to have something different to do. I became good at it, never realizing that I was honing skills and abilities that I would one day use to help calculate the hypothetical shape of the Earth.

Gladys West

To lay the foundation for GPS

In the 1960s, amid the Civil Rights movement, West's projects shifted from weapons systems to the fundamental nature of Earth's orbit, gravity, and shape. Much of the work was top secret: the Department of Defense wanted a reliable, accurate satellite navigation system, and the Navy was developing key pieces of a foundational structure for the Global Positioning System, or GPS.

“One of my tasks was to calculate the geoid, the hypothetical shape of the Earth that coincided with mean sea level and its imaginary extension below, or above, land areas,” West writes. She faced the added challenge of working primarily with satellite data collected over water, which required taking tides and other forces into account.

In addition to the geoid model, her work improved the Earth's reference ellipsoid model and satellite orbit models. This work laid the foundation for GPS. "Without these three key elements, the use of satellites to determine a position on Earth would be impossible," she wrote. "The better these elements are determined and continually refined, the more accurate the positioning results will be."

West spent the next few decades improving on these results, while also completing a master's degree in public administration. She led data analysis projects for two NASA satellite missions to further develop the models, and published several GPS-related scientific papers. Yet West was often overlooked for career advancement opportunities that were offered to her white, male colleagues.

By 1964, the Navy had deployed its first satellite navigation system, a precursor to GPS, called Transit. It used five satellites and could produce a position accurate to within about 150 meters, although it often took up to an hour to get results.

In the 1970s, the military began planning a more advanced system that could generate location data almost instantly. But a fundamental problem limited the ability to generate the kind of precise location data we have today with GPS, which is typically accurate to about 1 meter. This problem lies at the heart of Einstein’s theory of relativity.

By the 1990s, with her children grown and her husband retired, West was ready for “more.” While still working full-time at Dahlgren, she completed coursework and exams to earn a doctorate in public administration and public affairs.

After 42 years of service, West retired from Dahlgren in 1998. “The highlight was when I could understand a software system well enough to identify its problems,” she wrote in an email.

In 2000, recovering from two strokes, West completed her dissertation and received her doctorate. In her memoir, she called it "the greatest achievement of my life."

Now, at 95, West is still thinking about “more.” She wants to see more interesting math teaching methods, more young people pursuing STEM classes, and more girls and women becoming confident in science. “Keep learning,” she says. “Follow your dreams.”

Gladys West and a colleague at Dahlgren, where West's research helped create GPS in 1985 - Photo: US Navy

West's contributions were largely overlooked until the 2010s, when her career was recognized. In 2018, West was inducted into the United States Air Force's Space and Missile Pioneers Hall of Fame.

Strong inspiration

Gladys West's example is a powerful inspiration. People who change their lives often start with a dream, and it is that dream that dramatically transforms the dreamer's life from rags to glory. America has a special "American dream", a "self-made" dream that many people pursue, most notably Abraham Lincoln, to escape their predetermined fate.

Dreams are sometimes already in the subconscious or we can create and put it into the subconscious. And that dream is the psychological motivation to promote the path of personal advancement. Dreams can develop from small and gradually grow. It also breaks the ice of obstacles to let the dream seed germinate.

In America, the dream is often supported by a good education system and research universities to give it wings. There must be a strong belief in learning, knowledge, or science and technology, what Nobel Prize winner Joel Mokyr calls industrial enlightenment, as something that will transform individuals and nations, not gods.

A series of life-changing examples take place all over the world, and on a large scale, in countries. A country without a dream is like an individual without one, wandering aimlessly in the hands of fate.

Dr. Nguyen Xuan Xanh

Do Thi Thu Tra (abridged translation from an article on the American Physical Society website)

Source: https://tuoitre.vn/nguoi-phu-nu-dat-nen-mong-cho-he-thong-dinh-vi-toan-cau-gps-20251027101155957.htm