July 25, 2025

Natalie Groysman 

11th Grade

Brooklyn Technical High School 

Hedy Lamarr was an Austrian-American actress and inventor whose life included both intelligence and innovation. Her official name is Hedwig Eva Maria Kiesler, and she was born on November 9, 1914, in Vienna, Austria. She gained international fame in the 1930s and 1940s as a movie star in Hollywood. However, while audiences admired her for her beauty and talent in her acting career, Lamarr was also working behind the scenes on scientific inventions that would end up shaping the future of communication. 

Lamarr’s biggest contributions to STEM happened during World War II. She wanted to make a lasting impact to help with war efforts. She teamed up with composer George Antheil to develop a new kind of radio guidance system for torpedoes. At the time, enemy forces could jam allied signals to throw off torpedoes aimed at enemy ships. Lamarr and Antheil came up with a solution called 'frequency hopping spread spectrum technology.’  Their idea was to create a way for a signal to jump between different radio frequencies in a pattern known only to the sender and receiver. This would make it nearly impossible for enemies to do anything to the signal. Although their technology didn’t end up being utilized during the actual war, it has been used countless times since.

Many years after the war, Lamarr’s invention found a new purpose. The concept of frequency hopping was the foundation for the development of Bluetooth, Wi-Fi, and GPS. These wireless systems rely on the ability to switch frequencies to avoid interference, allowing multiple devices to communicate efficiently and securely. She may not have directly developed Bluetooth and Wi-Fi, but it surely would've been impossible without her help.  Hedy Lamarr’s contributions to STEM went unrecognized for most of her life because she was better known as an actress and lived in a time when women were not taken seriously in scientific fields. However, in 1997, she received the Electronic Frontier Foundation Pioneer Award, and in 2014, she was put into the National Inventors Hall of Fame.

Hedy Lamarr was not just a movie star—she was a pioneer in science and technology. Her invention of frequency hopping spread spectrum technology made major contributions to modern wireless communication. Today, we benefit from her brilliance every time we use Bluetooth headphones, connect to Wi-Fi, or navigate with GPS.