Born in 1914 in Vienna, Austria, to a wealthy Jewish father and a mother who was a piano player, Hedy Lamarr became famous for her beauty and her cinematic roles, acting in Hollywood throughout the 1940s. Beyond her fame as an actress, she possessed a rare scientific mind. She worked on improvements in the field of traffic signals and invented a new wireless communications technology known as frequency hopping spread spectrum.
This invention came as a result of the United States entering World War II, when American submarines were facing problems with their radio communication systems. Hedy developed this technology as a solution — one that would later become the foundational cornerstone of modern Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, and wireless communications.
She lived for many years without receiving adequate recognition for her scientific contributions, until 1997, when she was awarded the Electronic Frontier Foundation Award and the Spirit of Achievement Award.
Today, Hedy Lamarr is considered a symbol of a woman who united art and science at a time when that was far from ordinary.