The mathematician Gladys West has died at the age of 95, being one of the pioneers in the development of satellite navigation systems, which allowed the appearance of GPS.
The GPS system makes it possible to determine the position of an object anywhere in the world with great precision, usually within a few meters with the help of information obtained from satellites in orbit.
It is a commonly used American system, available from everyday devices such as smartphones and activity watches in services such as Google Maps, and is important in sectors such as transportation, industry or security and emergencies.
To develop it, the contributions of engineers such as Gladys West, a mathematician from the United States who worked on satellite geodesy models, were needed.
West was born in 1930 and studied mathematics at Virginia State University. He worked at Dahlgren, where he made his first contributions to the development of the Global Positioning System and the Seasat radar altimetry project for ocean observation, which he directed.
He also worked with large-scale computers and data processing systems, analyzing satellite data, and in 1986 published an illustrated guide entitled ‘Data Processing System Specifications for the Geosat Satellite Radar Altimeter’.
If her contribution to GPS is currently known, it is due to a biography that West herself prepared for a University alumni ceremony and that was rescued by the Alpha Kappa Alfa sorority, to which she belonged.
Gladys West passed away this Saturday, January 17, at 95 years of age.
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