Dr Gladys West who helped GPS possible dies at 95

#jaiyeorie

West’s journey began in a segregated Virginia classroom where education felt like a door to something beyond the fields she grew up near. A scholarship to college led her into mathematics; mathematics led her into naval research; and decades of precise, painstaking modeling helped create the geoid — the mathematical reference surface that GPS satellites rely on to pinpoint positions on Earth. 

In a world guided by satellites, what does it mean that the person who helped make that guidance possible preferred paper maps?

That paradox stays with you — an invitation to think about whose work becomes invisible once it becomes indispensable.
 

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