Hedy Lamarr
The applied mathematician and pioneer of wireless communication technologies, Hedwig Eva Maria Kiesler—who was known by her international artistic name Hedy Lamarr—was born in the city of Vienna in Austria in 1914 on November 9. Hedy lived in an Austrian Jewish family that was financially well-off, and she lived in the luxury of the bourgeois class, where her father worked as a successful bank director. Her father's personality was very curious, which was the reason that planted in Hedy the love of curiosity and knowledge. Hedy's father used to take her on walks and explain to her how complex machines worked, such as printing presses and streetcars. Hedy’s genius appeared in childhood at the age of 5 years as a challenge; she was a genius by nature, as she was seen completely dismantling the parts of her music box and then reassembling it to understand its mechanical-physical working mechanism. Her mother was a famous classical pianist, which made Hedy's father enroll her in ballet and music lessons to blend science and art.
Hedy possessed a charming beauty that caught the attention of directors, which led her to try entering the world of cinema. At the age of 18 years, specifically in the year 1933, Hedy married a fabulously wealthy and strict Austrian arms and ammunition merchant named Friedrich Mandl. He used to treat her like a doll or an artistic piece displayed at parties and social events without her having an opinion or a voice, which made this marriage like a real prison for Hedy. But with the treatment of her husband or the challenge, Hedy transformed her life. Her husband used to take her forced to his military meetings and military evenings with army leaders, rocket scientists, and wireless systems engineers connected to the Nazi party and Mussolini. Hedy used to sit in silence and with a terrible intelligence, listening with her mathematical mind to all the details; so while everyone thought she was just a silent wife, she was absorbing the vital equations, engineering plans, weapons loopholes, and especially the problems of guiding naval torpedoes via radio waves and jamming them.
In the year 1930, when she was at the age of 22 years, Hedy courageously decided to escape from her husband and from the unstable political atmosphere in Austria. She fled to London, loaded in her mind with the military secrets she had heard. In London, she met the president of MGM International Studios, "Louis B. Mayer," who contracted with her and moved her to the United States of America to become one of the most famous stars of the Golden Age in Hollywood, and she was described as the most beautiful woman in the world. Despite the fame and glamour, Hedy faced a conflict inside her; society and producers were focusing on her appearance only and completely marginalized her mind. But Hedy was trying to resist this marginalization, which is why she set up an inventing table in her home and a small laboratory for which she provided equipment inside her acting trailer in the film studios. She used to spend the breaks between scenes and the long hours of the night conducting engineering experiments and developing new inventions, like inventing an improved traffic light system, and an effervescent tablet that dissolves in water to make a carbonated drink similar to Coca-Cola. She also dealt with the aircraft designer Howard Hughes, where she studied the wings of the fastest birds and fishes, which amazed Howard, and he used to tell her "you are wonderful" after she designed for him a new military streamlined airplane wing.
With the beginning of World War II in the year 1940, Hedy provided real and free help to defeat Nazism. With her absolute intelligence, she spotted the biggest physical and military dilemma that was troubling the Allies; which was that their naval torpedoes were easily disabled because enemies were able to detect the wireless radio waves that guided the torpedo underwater and jammed them, making it completely lose its course. Hedy collaborated with her friend, the avant-garde musician and inventor "George Antheil." Hedy invented an amazing scientific breakthrough; she inspired the idea from the player piano machine and formulated digital mechanical equations and systems that allow the "radio signal" to hop continuously, quickly, and in a programmed way between 88 different frequencies, which is the same number of piano keys, so that the transmitter and receiver move in synchronization together, making it impossible for the enemy to detect the frequency or jam it because it became an unbreakable code.
And in the year 1942, August 11, while she was at the age of 27 years, it was named the "Secret Communication System," known scientifically today as "Frequency Hopping."
Although the invention was a donation for free, the army leaders at that time mocked the idea due to their lack of understanding of the idea, and also because she was a beautiful Hollywood actress, so they were saying "use your fame to sell naval bonds instead of keeping busy with engineering." Hedy's invention was placed in the drawers, closed secretly for long years. After many decades, the secret period ended and electronics developed, and the entire scientific and technical community realized the value of her invention. They also realized, with her mathematical evidence, that "Frequency Hopping" was not just a wartime weapon, but it was the essential pillar and cornerstone upon which the entire contemporary wireless communication revolution was built, thanks to her idea that helped scientists in inventing and developing Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, cellular phone networks, and the Global Positioning System (GPS), and the technical community named her "The Mother of Wi-Fi."
In honor of this inspiring journey filled with patience, Hedy received a high international recognition late in her life; she obtained in the year 1997, when she was at the age of 82 years, the "EFF Pioneer Award," to be the first woman in history to receive this honor, and she was also honored with a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.
And in the year 2000 on January 19 at the age of 85 years in the state of Florida, Hedy Lamarr passed away due to heart complications. This wonderful woman, this wonderful woman left behind an enduring historical legacy
