When West joined the Naval Surface Warfare Center in Virginia in 1956, she was one of just four black employees, two of whom were men. One of those men, Ira West, would later become her husband.
Early
in her career, West contributed to an astronomical study that proved
the regularity of Pluto's rotation relative to Neptune.
From the
mid-1970s through the 1980s, she programmed a computer to come up with a
super-accurate model of the Earth, accounting for variations in the
planet's shape caused by gravitational, tidal, and other forces.
This
model laid the groundwork for the Global Positioning System (GPS) that's
ubiquitous in the military, smartphones, and cars today.
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