Gladys West, Virginia-Born Navy Scientist Who Got Belated Credit for Helping Create GPS, Dies at 95
One frosty morning in January 1956, Gladys Brown and her younger brother, Nolan, drove north on Route 301 in Virginia. They needed a map to find their way to the Naval Proving Ground, a military research center on the banks of the Potomac River in Dahlgren, Va.
Brown, a 25-year-old mathematician later known by her married name of West, had worked for two years as a high-school teacher. Now she was starting a Navy job involving computers but had only a vague notion of what sort of mathematical work she would be doing.
