Yet the woman who helped to develop global mapping, which provides pinpoint locations everywhere on the planet, preferred to use traditional paper maps herself. “I’m a doer, a hands-on person,” she told the Guardian in 2020. “If I can see the road and see where it turns and see where it went, I am more sure.” It was this straightforward approach that helped West rise from a poor upbringing in the segregated American south to running a generation-length project incorporating the most complicated new technology as it developed.