Because of a Mathematician From Rural Virginia Work on Global Positioning, You Have No Excuse for Getting Lost

Gladys West had an “insatiable thirst for knowledge.” She used computers, radars and satellites to make calculations that led to the GPS technology that allows us to pinpoint any spot on the globe

Jennie Rothenberg Gritz

Illustration by Noa Denmon

Summer 2026

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When mathematician Gladys Mae West died this year at 95, she was celebrated for her work on global positioning satellite mapping. “We didn’t know exactly where it was going, because we worked for the military, where everything is secret,” West once recalled. As a child in segregated rural Virginia, West attended what she described as “the stereotypical little one-room schoolhouse, with rusty, decrepit furniture, sometimes leaky ceilings, and always hand-me-down books.”

She won a scholarship to Virginia State College, propelling her toward 42 years of mapping for the U.S. Navy. In the 1960s, she helped train a computer to do five billion calculations to measure the movement of Pluto. In the ’70s, she began using radar and satellite data to calculate the Earth’s curvature, accounting for ice levels, ocean currents, gravity and tides. Her work helped scientists create the precise model used by GPS to pinpoint any location on the planet. After her retirement in 1998, West went on to earn a PhD in public administration.

“I still had an insatiable thirst for knowledge,” she wrote in her memoir, It Began With a Dream. “I always had this sense that there was more to accomplish.” 

Jennie Rothenberg Gritz | Read More

Jennie Rothenberg Gritz is a senior editor at Smithsonian magazine. She was previously a senior editor at the Atlantic.

Noa Denmon | Read More

Noa Denmon, winner of a Caldecott Honor award, illustrates stories of the underrepresented.