Gladys West was born in 1930, in Dinwiddie County, Virginia - "a real rural kind of a place".
Most families were tenants of a farm and a proportion of their crops had to be handed over to the landowners.
Her family had a small farm and she had to work in the fields with them.
"I guess I found that a little bit contrary to what I had in my mind of where I wanted to go," she says.
West didn't want to stay picking tobacco, corn or cotton like the people she saw around her, and she didn't want to work in a nearby factory, beating tobacco leaves into pieces small enough for cigarettes and pipes.
"I thought at first I needed to go to the city. I thought that would get me out of the country and out of the fields. But then as I got more educated, went into the higher grades, I learned that education was the thing to get me out."
At school, scholarships at the local university were offered to the top of the class students.
This was West's best chance so she worked hard & secured her that scholarship.
"They were trying to tell me, since I was good at all my subjects, that I should major in science or math or something that was more difficult and meant people didn't major in it."
And so she took maths, which at the time was a predominantly male subject.
"You felt a little bit different. You didn't quite fit in as you did in home economics. You're always competing and trying to survive because you're in a different group of people."
After teaching for a couple of years, West's degree gave her opportunities elsewhere and she moved on to work at the naval base in Dahl Green where she would collect and process data from satellites, using it to help determine their exact location.
It was this information that would go on to help develop GPS.
She would work with programmers on the functions the massive computers needed to do.
"The operators would call us to tell us our programme was running now and we could come down and watch it, so we would come down and watch this big computer churn away. Then you'd get some results. Nine times out of 10 they weren't completely right so you had to analyse them and find out what was different to what you expected."
At the same time Mrs West was working as a mathematician, the civil rights movement was gaining ground in the US.
The campaign, led by figures such as Martin Luther King and Malcolm X, challenged racism across the country.
More than a quarter of a million people marched to the Lincoln Memorial, to listen to King's "I have a dream" speech.
But Mrs West's work set her apart from that movement.
"It turned out to be somewhat separate for us because we were working for the government and we couldn't do a whole lot of participating in non-government activities off-base," she says.
"We lived on the base and we didn't communicate too well with the community that was around us.
We didn't get involved with it [the civil rights movement, partly because it wasn't safe because of the job, to do that."
West was recommended as project manager for the Seasat radar altimetry project, the first satellite that could remotely sense oceans.
Retiring in 1998, after working for more than 40 years, she and her husband Ira, decided to mark this new era in their life by travelling.
On her return, West returned to education - working towards a PhD - but suffered a stroke which affected her hearing, vision, balance and mobility, and left her feeling miserable.
"All of a sudden these words came into my head: 'You can't stay in the bed, you've got to get up from here and get your PhD.'"
Further challenges to her health included a breast cancer diagnosis a few years ago.
Only when a member of her university sorority, Alpha Kappa Alpha, read a short biography Mrs West had submitted for an alumni function, were her achievements noticed & recognised.
A joint resolution was passed which commended her "for her trailblazing career in mathematics and vital contributions to modern technology".
Mrs West is now recognised to have played an "integral role" in the development of GPS.
When asked about her becoming a role model for women, she said
"I think I did help. We have made a lot of progress since when I came in, because now at least you can talk about things and be open a little more.
Before you sort of whispered and looked at each other, or something, but now the world is opening up a little bit and making it easier for women.
But they still gotta fight."