I'm sorry to see obituaries for Dr. Gladys West this morning: https://thezebra.org/2026/01/18/dr-gladys-west-mathematician-whose-work-made-gps-possible-dies-at-95/
She was brilliant and did a lot of incredibly important scientific work, a lot of which was hidden/uncredited early on, because she was a mathematician in a time when "computer" was a job description.
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@sundogplanets Lots of work on geodesy and the geoid as well as the astronomical work. Just in time for the seventies work on plate tectonics and deeper Earth structure.
A paper from a few years ago by Dung et al. looked at how often programmers were not credited as authors in genetics research papers from the 1970s and 1980s, but were acknowledged as programmers who ran the code for the analysis, and how often those uncredited scientists were women https://academic.oup.com/genetics/article/211/2/363/5931132?login=false
It used to be very common practice to have a programmer do your analysis for you, and they weren't considered a co-author (probably because many were women)
@sundogplanets "probably because many were women"
citation needed
In 1964, the first simulation showing that Pluto is in a mean-motion resonance with Neptune was published: https://articles.adsabs.harvard.edu/pdf/1965Obs....85...43C
They ran a 120,000 year simulation that showed libration of the resonant angle for the first time. This must have been terrifyingly hard to do. Punch cards, vacuum tubes, FORTRAN? I don't even know how they did this, but it was run on the Naval Ordnance Research Calculator
This was the first time Pluto's orbital stability was explained.
@sundogplanets So not only does Pluto have a Valentine heart on it, this diagram explaining the stability of its orbit has a smiley face.
@jadebees Pluto is very friendly, despite its demotion from planetary status!
@sundogplanets
In 1966 #LarryNiven a SciFi author in #WorldOfPtavvs had #Pluto a moon of Neptune, long previously hit by a spaceship at relativistic speed aimed at #Neptune An artifact protected by a plot device remained on it.
He would have been aware of that work I think.
Good story, although the usual elements wouldn't do this century.
Thanks for the nifty reference!
If Galileo had proposed such an abstruse orbit they would have put him to boil with carrots and onions 
You know who did a lot of programming on the Naval Ordnance Research Computer and was brilliant and good at orbits? Gladys West!
This archived Air Force bio says she was involved in the Pluto study https://web.archive.org/web/20190603171222/https://www.afspc.af.mil/News/Article-Display/Article/1707464/mathematician-inducted-into-space-and-missiles-pioneers-hall-of-fame/
But the paper is credited as Cohen & Hubbard 1964. Because she was "just" a programmer, and the research note linked above starts and ends with "gentlemen", so yeah, they definitely didn't want to put her as a co-author.
@sundogplanets @ai6yr I highly recommend Dr. West’s autobiography, published in 2020.
Thanks for all the math, Dr. West! I see your work all over the Solar System.
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