Gladys West always preferred a printed map over her phone’s GPS app.
Her daughter, Carolyn West Oglesby, said the once-ubiquitous map of the country’s highways and interstates was a staple for family outings and road trips.
She preferred the precision of a map over the convenience of GPS, Oglesby said, chuckling at the irony. Despite her preference, West was integral in the creation of GPS technology during a time when Black female mathematicians had a number of obstacles to navigate.
West died Jan. 17 at the age of 95. Her life’s journey took her from her birthplace of Sutherland in Dinwiddie County to completing her master’s degree in mathematics at Virginia State College in 1955.
That same year she started working as an educator in Martinsville. During a monthslong stay in the city, she taught mathematics at the Albert Harris School, according to biographical data provided by the Library of Congress.
While in Martinsville, her application to the Naval Surface Warfare Center in Dahlgren was accepted. She started work there in 1956 as a mathematician and was the fourth Black professional hired by the agency. According to information provided by the U.S. Space Force, her early work entailed verifying complex calculations.
Eventually her work would involve creating algorithms to calculate accurate models of the Earth — work that would eventually lay the foundation for orbital global positioning systems.
West is among those inducted into the Space Force’s “Space and Missile Pioneers,” an honor that Jane Plitt said almost never happened.
“She was offered an interview and she decided not to go for it because she thought it wasn’t worth the gas money,” said Plitt, the founder of the National Center of Women’s Innovations, an Alexandria-based nonprofit that seeks to spread awareness about female innovators. “She didn’t think, given her sex and her race, that she had a chance. Instead the manager hired her without an interview.”
It was during her work with the National Center that Plitt became aware of West and, in 2024, created an interactive traveling exhibit detailing West’s life and legacy.
“The contribution of GPS to transforming the world affects every business and defense sector, and yet most Americans have no idea that a Black female mathematician was the key to enabling all of us to be safely transported wherever we wanted to go,” Plitt said.
Only in recent years has the general public become aware of West’s work, Plitt said. Both West and her husband, Ira West, were required to keep their work secret. This includes from their three children, who only learned about their mother’s work in 2018.
“We were at a sorority meeting and the leader asked the older [sorority members] to write down what they did in their career,” said Oglesby, who lives in Fredericksburg.
After West casually mentioned “GPS,” it occurred to those present what she meant.
“This is really huge,” Oglesby recalls someone saying to her.
Soon after, a reporter interviewed West.
“As I was listening to Mom and to Dad, I realized what they had worked on,” Oglesby said. “I was amazed.”
Oglesby said it isn’t too surprising that her mother stayed silent for as long as she did. Even as children, Oglesby and her siblings never had an inkling of their mother’s work.
“Nowadays kids will ask what did your parents do or where did they work,” Oglesby said. “We didn’t do that because everyone worked in the same building on base. So everyone just assumed they were doing the same thing, no one was overly curious.”
That secrecy was indicative of who her mother was as a person, she said. She described West as humble, focused and quietly driven, traits she passed on to her kids.
Oglesby, who has a doctorate in organizational behavior and human resource management, said that pursuing an education was never a question in the West household.
“She’s hardworking, she’s orderly, she’s positive … a go-getter,” Oglesby said. “We watched Mom and Dad study; they were doing a master’s program together. They both had degrees already and we watched mom do her Ph.D. program. They encouraged us to take the courses that would get us into college, but there was never a discussion about whether we had to go to college, it was just assumed that we would.”
Oglesby said she is glad that her mother lived to see a time when her work and the work of other Black women were recognized by the public. The 2016 movie “Hidden Figures,” which tells the story of the Black female mathematicians whose calculations were integral to the moon landing, was a favorite of West’s.
“I think we need to know our history and I think we need to know that we can do big things,” Oglesby said. “People would always ask about the racial tension, and how do you overcome that, and mom said that she concentrated more on showing them that [she was] just as smart as they were.”