Gladys West, mathematician and geodesist who found the Earth's shape for GPS

Gladys West, linocut, 11" x 14" by Ele Willoughby, 2020

Geodesy is the study of the shape of the Earth. The Earth isn’t a ball so much as an oblate spheroid- that means it’s a bit of a flattened oval in cross-section. Further there are bumps and divots, deviations from the reference ellipsoid. Measuring these deviations teaches us about our Earth and oceans, and the orbital dynamics of satellites. This mathematician and geodesist only started to get the recognition she deserves in recent years for the role she played in various satellite programs, including most famously the Global Positioning System (GPS).  

Gladys Mae West (née Brown) was born in 1930 in in Sutherland, Dinwiddie County, in rural Virginia. Her family were farmers in a community of share-croppers; her mother also worked at a tobacco company and her father also worked for the railroad. She decided early on that she needed an education if she didn't want to work in a factory or in the cotton, corn or tobacco fields. She secured a scholarship to Virginia State University, a HBPU (Historically Black Public University) as her high school class valedictorian. A great all-around student, she was unsure what subject to pursue but was encouraged to major in science and math since fewer people had the aptitude to tackle them. She choose the male-dominated field of mathematics, and joined the Alpha Kappa Alpha sorority. She graduated with a Bachelor of Science in Mathematics in 1952 and taught math and science for two years before returning to complete her Masters in Mathematics at VSU in 1955. She taught again briefly before starting her career at the Naval Proving Ground in Dahlgren, Virginia (now the Naval Surface Warfare Center) in the US in 1956. There were only 3 other Black people there, one woman and two men, and she says felt the pressure to always do everything right and set an example. She was hired as a computer programmer in the Naval Surface Warfare Center Dahlgren Division and a project manager for satellite data-processing systems. All the while, she earned a second Master's in public administration from the University of Oklahoma.

She fell in love with one of her two male, Black mathematician colleagues, Ira West. They married, had three children (and now seven grandchildren) and have been together for over 60 years.

In the 1960s, she participated in an award winning study which  proved the regularity of Pluto’s motion relative to Neptune. She then began using satellite altimeter data to model the Earth's shape, particularly the oceans. Her hard work paid off, when her department head recommended her for a commendation 1979 and she became the project manager for the Seasat radar altimetry project, the first remote sensing satellite for the oceans. From the mid 70s through the 80s West developed complex algorithms for an IBM 7030 “Stretch” computer in order to model distortions in the Earth's shape due to gravitational, tidal and other forces. Her calculations produced an extremely accurate geodetic Earth model, or geoid, optimized to determine the sallite orbits of what we now know as the Global Positioning System. She thus played a pivotal role in the development of technology which is so central to our lives, as GPS is embedded in industry, navigation, telecommunications and applications which exceed anything the US Navy could ever have imagined.

In 1986, West also published Data Processing System Specifications for the Geosat Satellite Radar Altimeter, a 51-page technical report for the Naval Surface Weapons Center (NSWC), a guide to increase the accuracy of the estimation of geoid heights and vertical deflection, based on Geosat radio altimetry data.

My portrait features three of the satellites central to her carreer: Seasat, a GPS satellite and GEOS-3, as well as the satellite paths for Geosat based on her own publications.

After 42 years, she retired 1998. She and Ira travelled, but she decided to return to academia and pursue a doctorate. She suffered a stroke which impacted her hearing, vision, balance and mobility, but despite this, she persisted and completed a PhD in Public Administration from Virginia Tech in 2018 at age 88!

Her acheivements only started to receive recognition when a sorority sister from Alpha Kappa Alpha read the brief bio she submitted for an alumni function and pointed out to her that she was a "Hidden Figure" of GPS. Her story started to be covered in the press. She was officially recognised by the Virginia Senate and she was inducted into the United States Air Force Hall of Fame in 2018, one of the highest honors bestowed by Air Force Space Command (AFSPC).

References

Amelia Butterly, '100 Women: Gladys West - the 'hidden figure' of GPS,' BBC.com, May 20, 2018

Air Force Space Command Public Affairs, 'Mathematician inducted into Space and Missiles Pioneers Hall of Fame,' December 07, 2018
 
Cathy Dyson, 'Gladys West's work on GPS 'would impact the world,' January 19, 2018,
The Free Lance Star, Fredericksburg.com. 

Gladys West, wikipedia, accessed July 6, 2020 

West, Gladys B. (June 1986). "Data Processing System Specifications for the Geosat Satellite Radar Altimeter" (PDF). Naval Surface Weapons Center, Report NSWC TR 86-149.

Delicacies in the Garden of Plenty Album Cover & Second Harvest Fundraiser

My digital collage of linocuts for the album artwork for 'Delicacies in the Garden of Plenty'

My friend Sarah Peebles asked me about making this album and I decided to donate my artwork since this is a fundraiser for Second Harvest, Canada’s largest food rescue charity. The pandemic has hit food banks very hard and I wanted to help. Today is the day to check out the music by Sarah Peebles, Kyle Brenders and Nilan Perara and pay what you can to contribute, because on Friday, July 3 (in fact, the first Friday of each month), Bandcamp is waiving its revenue share for all sales, from midnight to midnight PDT on each day. Check isitbandcampfriday.com for timezone demystification. ⠀⠀
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Free/PWYC On Bandcamp now via Second Harvest⠀
“Artists & Second Harvest have come together to support Canadians impacted by COVID-19! “ Delicacies in the Garden of Plenty” (Peebles, Brenders, Perera) is a new album supporting Second Harvest, Canada’s largest food rescue charity with a dual mission of environmental protection and hunger relief. Creative music & sound art with gorgeous cover art! Listen to these beautiful tracks and Donate what you can at : https://secondharvestca.bandcamp.com/releases. All proceeds go straight to Second Harvest. " #BandAgainstHunger

Cover: lino-cut collage by Ele Willoughby / @the.minouette⠀

Death by Shakespeare Illustrations

My linocut chapter illustration for Chapter 1 of ‘Death by Shakespeare’ by Kathryn Harkup

In early March, like everyone else I guess, my attention was taken by current events and the impending pandemic. Sure enough, once schools closed as the lock-down set in, I found I had little time and less energy. Blogging is one of the things I neglected. I managed to keep posting art to Instagram and made a point to post women in science daily for Women's History Month, trying to avoid the all-too-common physicist's mistake of playing arm-chair epidemiologist (and assuming if you've mastered numerical modelling that you know what to do) or since I share a lot of science communication, I wanted to avoid talking about Covid-19, because I have no pertinent expertise (being a scientist doesn't qualify you to talk about all subjects and this one in particular needed I think, fewer self-appointed experts muddying the waters). Also, since "doomscrolling" is now a recognized fixation of people, I wanted to break up people's mounting tension with art. So I have been sharing a lot of art and making art when not amateur homeschooling our son... but not much else. Today, I'm playing catch up.

My linocut chapter illustration for Chapters 2, 3 and 4 of ‘Death by Shakespeare’ by Kathryn Harkup

I neglected to share this here, though I am excited to be able to share. Last fall I made the chapter illustrations for ‘Death by Shakespeare’ by Kathryn Harkup! I just got my copies in the mail right before the lock-down. Such a fun project researching, planning and carving linocut chapter headings for 11 chapters about how Shakespeare offed his characters (see handy pie chart here). The illustrations are supposed to be reminiscent of the engravings you would see in old books, and set the scene for each chapter. I made the linocuts at 4 times the scale that they appear to get the details I wanted. I spent October reading about Shakespeare, his plays and life, poisons, weapons, Renaissance medicine and various awful corporal and capital punishment techniques. And the language of flowers.

My linocut chapter illustration for Chapters 5, 6 and 7 of ‘Death by Shakespeare’ by Kathryn Harkup

The first chapter was fairly straightforward, about the bard himself. So in conversation with author and publisher I choose plume, inkwell, drama masks and the spear from Shakespeare’s coat of arms.
The 2nd chapter is about Shakespeare’s world. Since he wrote “all the world’s a stage” and literally named his theatre The Globe, I thought of illustrating the Globe and its neighbourhood. The 3rd chapter is about medicine and what could be treated in Shakepear's day. My first thought was William Harvey who discovered the circulation of blood in Shakespeare’s day, but we opted for some more general images of contemporary medicine (rather than referencing specific experiments of Harvey which aren’t mentioned in the text). The urology flask was used as a sign for a doctor, as testing urine was a vital diagnostic tool. I was able to find a lot of reference prints for Renaissance surgical tools. Medicinal plants included the poppy and mandrake root - a fun thing to research! In the centre is a specific allusion to Shakespeare’s ‘Pericles’ where a medical chest was thrown overboard. I researched antique medical chests and first imagined it viewed through a round porthole window. Then I decided I had better check if 16th century vessels had round porthole windows and wasn’t able to find any hard evidence that they did. So I went for some nautical looking rope to frame that part of the image instead to avoid any anachronism.⠀

My linocut chapter illustration for Chapters 8, 9 and 10 of ‘Death by Shakespeare’ by Kathryn Harkup

Chapter 4 was a little grim for me, to be honest, spending a few days thinking about execution. This print includes heads on spikes, noose, executioner’s mask, block and axe, as well as a Gibbet. If you aren’t familiar, don’t look them up. There’s a lot of murder in Shakespeare and most of them, in fact most deaths in the plays, are stabbings. So for Chapter 5 I researched Renaissance weapons, knives, swords and daggers. We’ve also got Clarence in the butt of malmsey and Desdemona with the pillow. A butt is a specific type of barrel or even a unit of volume of the time and I now know a bunch of barrel and cask facts! Chapter 6 is the “dogs of war.” When I was younger I read all the history plays and I have a great illustrated collection of the plays. They cover centuries of history so there were variations in arms and armour over that time but the majority of stories of war in Shakespeare are about England and the War of the Roses, so I wanted to include the lions and fleur de lys shield and the white and red roses of Lancaster and York. The phrase “the dogs of war” made me think of an inexorable march so I wanted spears, pikes, halberds and pennants to suggest advancing armies. Chapter 7 is “A Plague O’both Your Houses” about disease. The plague itself and a plague doctor’s mask were clearly needed! Rats, suspected plague carriers also make an appearance. I looked into the history of plague doctor masks which varied in different times and places. The other imagery is more subtle: roses are geese were associated with syphillis! I keep thinking about the Untitled Goose Game and giggling to myself. I wanted the geese to be aggressive looking.⠀The plague mask feels more topical now than I could ever imagine.

Poison was my favourite chapter to illustrate for ‘Death by Shakespeare’ - bottles, pots, and vials of fluids and powder. Renaissance apothecary jars are delightfully imperfect. Cleopatra’s venomous asp also makes an appearance as well as poisonous plants and mushroom known and used at the time: aconite, hellbane, deadly nightshade, yew and fly agaric. Chapter 9 is about Shakespeare’s characters who take their own lives, so we wanted to treat this sensitively and symbolically, so we have Ophelia’s flowers. There is a long tradition of the language of flowers and Ophelia herself specifies what several mean. She mentions rosemary, pansies, fennel, violets, columbines and daisies.⠀Chapter 10 is about the effects grief and broken-heartedness . A conceptual chapter is a bit less obvious but what came to mind was memento mori, symbolic reminders of our mortality which have long played a part of art history. The symbolism runs deep, but I tried to incorporate and stick to symbols common in Shakespeare’s day. The skull is common of course- and famously used precisely as a reminder of our mortality in Hamlet. The hourglass and candle (which could be snuffed out) represent our finite lifetimes. The live flowers contrast with the skull but wilting flowers again suggest our lives are finite. Butterflies are also common and can be a symbol of the soul. I enjoyed carving this one.

My linocut chapter illustration for Chapter 11, how it appeared in the book and the cover (cover art not by me) of ‘Death by Shakespeare’ by Kathryn Harkup

The strange misfit Shakespearean deaths chapter includes “Exit, pursued by a bear,” baked in a pie, an ounce of flesh, lightening and um, severed hands. I worried about getting the bear species right. There are a lot of poorly identified bears on the internet, let me tell you. ⠀
This is the first time I have done all the illustrations for a book, something I've long wanted to do and it was a real treat to have a fascinating and rich topic like this.