Dr. Gladys West

Meet The Navy’s GPS Pioneer Dr. Gladys West

Looking back on the legacies of some of the amazing women who have contributed to the field of technology at sea. Trailblazers in their fields, these women broke down barriers, defied expectations, and continue to inspire intelligence analysts daily across the maritime and defense community. GPS pioneer and U.S. Naval Weapons Laboratory scientist Dr. Gladys West is one such memorable woman.

Gladys Mae Brown was born in 1930 in Dinwiddie, Virginia, a rural farming community. She often said she pursued higher education to escape a hard life on a farm. When she learned that the valedictorian and salutatorian from her high school would earn a scholarship to Virginia State College (now University), she studied and graduated at the top of her class.

West majored in mathematics, which at the time was a field studied nearly exclusively by men. She taught school in Sussex County for two years before she went back to school for her master’s degree in Public Administration. She later obtained a doctorate in Public Administration.

Determinedly, West sought out jobs to use her diverse skills and eventually was hired in 1956 as a mathematician at the U.S. Naval Weapons Laboratory, an early forerunner to Naval Surface Warfare Center Dahlgren Division.

Dr. Gladys West is among a small group of women who performed computing work for the U.S. military in the era before electronic systems. The Air Force Space and Missile Pioneers Award (which she won in 2018) pays tribute to the leaders of the early years of the Air Force space program, as well as the subsequent innovators whose vision and perseverance overcame the obstacles of the unknown, those who transformed the cutting-edge of technology into operational systems, and those who dedicated their lives to exploring space in support of US national security.

Read the full article in the link below:
https://gcaptain.com/meet-the-navys-gps-pioneer-dr-gladys-west/