When programming your navigation system for a trip (land, sea, or air), thank Dr. Gladys Mae Brown West for her development of the Global Positioning System (GPS).
Gladys Mae Brown was born in rural Sutherland Virginia, where her parents owned a small farm in an area popula-ted mostly by sharecroppers. Growing up, when not in school, she spent much of her time helping to harvest crops on the family farm, an occupation she knew many of her peers would continue into adulthood. In her community the only clear options for a young Black girl’s future were continuing to farm or working at a tobacco-processing plant.
Breaking Ground at an HBCU
But at school Gladys’s exceptional talent for learning offered another path. As valedictorian of her high school graduating class, Gladys received a full scholarship to Virginia State College (now Virginia State University), the historically Black college where she earned a degree in mathematics in 1952. Gladys later returned for a master’s degree in mathematics, graduating in 1955, after spending time teaching math in racially segregated Virginia schools and applying for a series of jobs in Virginia’s segregated state government that were instead awarded to white men.
In 1956, Gladys Brown was hired as the second Black woman to work at the Naval Proving Ground, (now the Naval Surface Warfare Center) in Dahlgren, Virginia. There she met Ira West, one of only two Black men working at the facility, and married him in 1957. While working as a computer programmer there and as a project manager for processing systems for satellite data analysis, Gladys West earned a second masters degree, in Public Administration, from the University of Oklahoma.
Accomplishments and Achievements
At Dahlgren, Gladys West was admired for her ability to solve complex mathematical equations by hand. She eventually transitioned from solving those equations herself to programming computers to do it for her.
One of…
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