Talk:Gladys West

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This article has been mentioned by multiple media organizations:

Jocelyn Evans (February 11, 2020). "Physicist writes 900 Wikipedia entries to boost diversity in science". itv.com. Retrieved February 17, 2020. Asked about some of the highlights from her 900 Wikipedia entries so far, Dr Wade reeled off in an instant a list of female scientists and scientists of colour. One entry - from the start of her project - is Gladys West, an African American mathematician known for her work on mathematical modelling of the shape of the Earth. Another was Katie Bouman, the woman behind the first black hole image. Dr Wade described Clarice Phelps, the first African-American woman to be involved with the discovery of a chemical element, as a "rockstar".
Jenny Singer (2021-01-26). "The Women of Wikipedia Are Writing Themselves Into History". Glamour (magazine). Retrieved 2021-01-26. Jess Wade has written over 1,000 biographies of women for Wikipedia in between her work in the U.K. as a physicist. Her favorite is a page that belongs to Gladys West, the daughter of sharecroppers, whose work as a mathematician was later used to create GPS.
"The Guardian view on Wikipedia's female volunteers: a hive heroism that changes history". The Guardian. 8 March 2024. Retrieved 6 April 2024. In science, for instance, the mathematician Gladys West, the viral immunologist Kizzy Corbett and the physicist Prineha Narang are among 2,100 entries added since 2017 by the British academic Jess Wade.

Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment

This article was the subject of a Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment, between 4 January 2019 and 17 April 2019. Further details are available on the course page. Student editor(s): Gwilliams06.

Above undated message substituted from Template:Dashboard.wikiedu.org assignment by PrimeBOT (talk) 21:49, 17 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment

This article was the subject of a Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment, between 16 March 2020 and 1 May 2020. Further details are available on the course page. Student editor(s): Jazwarfie. Peer reviewers: O.Joness22.

Above undated message substituted from Template:Dashboard.wikiedu.org assignment by PrimeBOT (talk) 21:49, 17 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Year of birth

according to this source [1] she was born in 1930. --Cholo Aleman (talk) 07:13, 20 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]

GPS

This article needs to clarify her contributions to GPS. They weren't (AFAICS) a direct contribution to the GPS programme, but rather in the fundamentals and background geodesy needed to make it work. Her specific contributions were more related to Seasat and Geosat, satellites which measured the precise shape of the Earth, rather than the satellites which would then provide navigational information within that. Her contribution wasn't to the navigational position fixing, but rather in relating that to where on the Earth the GPS receiver would then be. Andy Dingley (talk) 10:10, 20 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]

I tried to clarify this some. If you have some better understanding, please make additions! Skepticalgiraffe (talk) 04:40, 4 February 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Indeed, give the present trend to exalt certain "minorities" and push the idea of their "contributions" to the forefront, I'm a little bit prejudiced, when reading about stories like this. --105.12.5.97 (talk) 11:07, 6 August 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Duplicated References

Many of the references seem to be simply reprints of the one article, "Gladys West's work on GPS 'would impact the world'" in different magazines, or of "Meet Gladys West: One Of The 'Hidden Figures' Behind The Creation Of The GPS System", which quotes from that article. I have now consolidated these references. Skepticalgiraffe (talk) 03:59, 5 February 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Pluto orbit

This sentence appears in the Air Force Space Command website: "Hired in 1956 as a mathematician at the U.S. Naval Weapons Laboratory, she participated in a path-breaking, award-winning astronomical study that proved, during the early 1960s, the regularity of Pluto’s motion relative to Neptune."

Other than that mention, however, and several of the articles which seem to be quoting that mention, I can't find any link to her involvement in that work-- I search google scholar for any papers mentioning Pluto with her name as an author, and came out blank. Can anybody find any details on this? The only Naval Surface Weapons work on Pluto seems to be the work published by Cohen and Hubbard 1964. http://adsabs.harvard.edu/full/1965AJ.....70...10C I assume she must have been the computer operator on this project? But she's not listed in the acknowledgements in the paper, and a search for "west" in papers by Cohen and Hubbard draws a blank.

It seems important enough that I added it to the article (citing the Space Command website as a reference), but it would be better if I had an actual reliable source, preferably with a link to her contributions in the original work. Skepticalgiraffe (talk) 04:34, 5 February 2019 (UTC)[reply]

parking a reference

Mohdin, Aamna (19 November 2020). "Gladys West: the hidden figure who helped invent GPS". The Guardian. Retrieved 19 November 2020.

Objectivity

Some of the text, such as

However, West wouldn't let the ignorance of others derail her on the path she felt God had destined her to go on.

sounds rather subjective, or suffers from POV issues. Unless it has been quoted from a (reliable) source, and said source cited, it should be rephrased to become more objective or removed. SupremeDalek (talk) 11:21, 4 May 2021 (UTC)[reply]

I agree. This can be rephrased to be more objective. I might take a crack at it Dithridge (talk) 02:26, 9 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Wording Throughout Article

I think the wording throughout this article could be improved to be more concise and less “wordy”. While the information overall seems to be objective and well-sourced, many of the sentences, especially in the “Early Life and Education” section, could be improved. Gorgemagma (talk) 09:01, 19 April 2022 (UTC)[reply]