Famous Jews in History: Hedy Lamarr (1914–2000)
- May 25
- 1 min read
Hedwig Eva Maria Kiesler was born in Vienna, Austria, to a Jewish family. Her father was a bank director and her mother was a concert pianist.
In 1933 she married Friedrich Mandl, a wealthy Austrian arms manufacturer who supplied weapons to fascist regimes in Europe. Through that marriage Lamarr was often present at dinners and meetings where military engineers discussed weapons technology.
The marriage was unhappy and controlling. Lamarr later escaped and fled Europe, eventually making her way to Hollywood. When she signed with MGM studio, they gave her a new screen name: Hedy Lamarr.
During the Second World War, Lamarr remembered what she had learned about radio-guided weapons and became concerned that German forces could jam the radio signals used to guide Allied torpedoes.
Working with her good friend, composer George Antheil, she developed a system that rapidly switched radio frequencies so the signal could not easily be intercepted or blocked.
Their invention, known as frequency-hopping spread spectrum, was far ahead of its time. The U.S. Navy did not adopt the technology during the war.
Decades later, the same principle became a foundation of modern wireless communication. Variations of the technology are now used in Wi-Fi, Bluetooth and GPS.
Lamarr spent much of her life being celebrated as a Hollywood star. Only later did the world begin to recognise another side of her legacy: a Jewish immigrant whose wartime idea helped shape modern technology.