In 2016 we were made aware of three African-American women who shattered the glass ceiling, Katherine Johnson, Dorothy Vaughan, and Mary Jackson through the movie Hidden Figures. These women made a huge contribution while working at NASA and were the masterminds behind the launch of astronaut John Glen which ended up turning around the Space Race. Well, there is another “hidden figure” who is finally getting the recognition she deserves. Dr. Gladys West was honored for creating the Geographical Positioning System better known as the GPS.
Although West was unable to attend the ceremony in August, on December 6, 2018, West was inducted into the Air Force Space and Missile Pioneers Hall of Fame by the United States Air Force during a service at the Pentagon, joining three other individuals who have impacted the Air Force space program.
According to The Patrick Air Force Base website, Dr. Gladys West is among a small group of women who did computer for the U.S. military in the era before electronic systems. Hired in 1956 as a mathematician at the U.S. Naval Weapons Laboratory, she participated in path-breaking, an award-winning astronomical study that proved, during the early 1960s, the regularity of Pluto’s motion relative to Neptune.
Talk about #blackgirlmagic.
