For anyone not reading the article, she did fundamental work measuring the geoid, the non-spherical corrections to Earth's shape that is fundamental to very accurate GPS positioning.<p>Here's some pictures of the EGM2008 geoid we use today: <a href="https://francis.naukas.com/files/2023/07/D20230711-Computers-Geosciences-sciencedirect-doi-10-1016-j-cageo-2013-03-007-Geoid-height-computed-from-the-gravity-field-model-EGM2008.png" rel="nofollow">https://francis.naukas.com/files/2023/07/D20230711-Computers...</a>
I'm glad she got her flowers in the end. As a fellow Hokie who was in school around then I wish I knew of her and her accomplishments while I was a student. She was a distance learning PhD student so would have only been in Blacksburg occasionally.
Glad she finally got some recognition.
Gladys West deserves to have her name added to the list of notable Aptronyms, globally positioned alongside Tiger Woods and William Wordsworth.<p><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aptronym#Notable_examples" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aptronym#Notable_examples</a>
Heres her page on the Space Force “Space Pioneers” page.<p><a href="https://www.spaceforce.mil/Portals/2/Documents/Space_Pioneers/Space_Pioneers_Bios/SF_Space_Pioneers_Bio_West.pdf" rel="nofollow">https://www.spaceforce.mil/Portals/2/Documents/Space_Pioneer...</a><p>West was a person of great faith.<p>"I think everybody should have God in their life," Gladys says. "I can just about see the complete circle and I can go back and I can look and see what He did and where He put me and where all along. And I would think it's amazing that I didn't understand it at the time, exactly what was happening, but He was there and He was doing it."<p><a href="https://cbn.com/news/us/everybody-should-have-god-their-life-hidden-figure-was-key-space-race-and-even-made-gps" rel="nofollow">https://cbn.com/news/us/everybody-should-have-god-their-life...</a><p><a href="https://gideons.org/blog/dr-gladys-west" rel="nofollow">https://gideons.org/blog/dr-gladys-west</a>
(She passed away two days ago.)
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