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Hedy Lamarr lived a remarkable life as an actress of Hollywood’s Golden Age after leaving Europe shortly before the start of World War II. Fleeing a restrictive marriage in Austria in 1937, Lamarr arrived in Hollywood and skyrocketed to fame, starring in films like Algiers (1938), Ziegfeld Girl (1941), and Samson and Delilah (1949). However, only late in her life was she recognized for a lesser-known aspect of her work: inventing. During World War II, she invented a “Secret Communication System,” together with avant-garde composer George Antheil. The system used the concept of frequency hopping to guide torpedoes in a...

The remarkable life of the Hollywood siren who pioneered groundbreaking scientific inventions that paved the way for wifi and Bluetooth will be told in a new film. Hedy Lamarr, considered by her show business peers to be the most beautiful woman in the world during the 1940s and 50s, starred alongside the likes of Spencer Tracy, James Stewart and Clark Gable during her glittering acting career. But she was also a brilliant scientist who helped devise a frequency-hopping system which eventually formed the foundation for modern technologies such as wifi, GPS and Bluetooth.

Vittorio Luzzati/National Portrait Gallery, London Hedy Lamarr, the movie star who is less well known as an inventor. n 1933, at age 19, she swam in the nude in the notorious Czech film "Ecstasy." Often called the most beautiful woman in the world, she married badly — to a domineering Austrian munitions manufacturer — and escaped by drugging the maid and climbing out a window. She made her way to Hollywood, where she starred in movies with Spencer Tracy, Clark Gable and Jimmy Stewart. Then there is the less known chapter of her life. In World War II, she...