New York TimesMichael S Rosenwald

Gladys West, Navy mathematician who enabled GPS, dies at 95

Gladys West, a Navy mathematician whose calculations in the 1950s and beyond underpinned the development of global satellite-based mapping systems, has died at 95. Her decades of largely unheralded work supplied the foundational mathematics that ultimately made GPS and modern satellite navigation possible.

2026-01-27T16:09:25.762479-08:00