Gladys West

Meet the hidden figure behind the navigation system in your smartphone.

The Global Positioning System (GPS) is used by people all over the world. The technology tracks your location and helps people to find their way around wherever they are on the planet. Gladys West is an American mathematician who worked at a US Navy base. She contributed to the development of GPS, but her achievements were only officially recognised in 2018. She is now 93, but we were lucky to be able to speak to West's daughter, Carolyn Oglesby, about her mum's incredible story.

Country girl West was born in 1930 in Dinwiddie County, Virginia, US. Her parents owned a small farm, where she spent her time helping to harvest crops. Carolyn told Science+Nature, “When [West] was working on the farm, she knew that she wanted to do something different. She knew that education was the path to that.” Although it was expensive, West wanted to go to college so, when her teacher revealed that the top two students in her year could win a scholarship (money to help pay for further studies), West worked as hard as she could to finish top of her class.