Women Scientists

Hedy Lamarr 1913-2000

At a glance:

film star and communications expert

Born Hedwig Kiesler in Vienna, the mathematically gifted Lamarr learnt about military technology from her first husband who was an arms dealer. She became a film star following a meeting with Louis B Mayer in London, starring most famously in Samson and Delilah. At a Hollywood dinner party in 1941, the problem of Atlantic convoys coming under torpedo attack was raised. Lamarr and Antheil, an avant garde composer, devised a system intended to make it hard for enemies to detect radio guided torpedoes using frequency hopping, a way to rapidly change between a large number of frequencies. The pair filed a patent but it wasn't implemented until after it had expired, during the US blockade of Cuba in 1962. Frequency hopping forms the basis for all modern spread spectrum communications technology such as WiFi and cordless phones. Had the pair not let the patent expire, their heirs would have been billionaires.
Hedy Lamarr

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